Breakdown of Badet i sjön var mycket kallt.
vara
to be
mycket
much / very
kall
cold
sjön
the lake
badet
the bath, the swim
Questions & Answers about Badet i sjön var mycket kallt.
Why is badet translated as "the swim" instead of "the bath"?
In Swedish, ett bad isn't just a bath in a bathtub. It is the most common way to talk about taking a dip or going for a recreational swim outdoors. If you wanted to talk about swimming as a sport or focused exercise, you would use simningen.
Why does the adjective kallt end in -t here?
The adjective kallt describes the subject of the sentence, badet. Because ett bad is an ett word, the adjective must take the -t ending to match it. This rule applies even when there are other words, like i sjön, separating the subject from its adjective.
I've seen sjö used for "sea", but here it means "lake". How do I know which is which?
In everyday modern Swedish, en sjö almost always means a lake. The word for the ocean or sea is ett hav. However, sjö is still used to mean "sea" in nautical expressions, like working på sjön (at sea), or in the names of specific seas like Östersjön (the Baltic Sea).
Can I say väldigt kallt instead of mycket kallt?
Yes, you can. Both mycket and väldigt mean "very" and are interchangeable in this sentence. Väldigt is often preferred in relaxed, spoken Swedish, while mycket is slightly more neutral or formal, but both sound perfectly natural here.
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