Breakdown of Köpte du ett likadant vykort i turistbutiken?
ett
a, an (neuter)
du
you (singular)
köpa
to buy
i
in
Questions & Answers about Köpte du ett likadant vykort i turistbutiken?
Why do we use likadant here instead of likadan?
Because it describes the noun vykort (postcard), which is an ett-word (ett vykort). The word for identical or of the same kind must match the gender of the noun, so it takes the neuter form likadant.
If I wanted to ask about buying plural identical postcards, how would this sentence change?
You would change ett likadant vykort to the plural form likadana vykort. The plural form of the similarity determiner ends in -a, and the plural of the ett-word vykort stays the exact same because it is an ett-word ending in a consonant. The sentence becomes: Köpte du likadana vykort i turistbutiken?
Why is the preposition i used for the tourist shop rather than på?
In Swedish, you usually use i (in) with physical shops like en butik or en affär because you are physically standing inside the building. You might hear på used with the names of large store chains, but for a specific local shop, i is the standard choice.
How do we know that turistbutiken takes the en-word definite ending -en?
In compound words like this one, the grammatical gender is always decided by the very last part of the word. Since en butik (a shop) is an en-word, the entire compound turistbutiken (the tourist shop) acts as an en-word.