Breakdown of Piraten lär plundra fartyget där kungen bor.
bo
to live
kungen
the king
där
where (relative)
fartyget
the ship
lär
is said to / is likely to
piraten
the pirate
plundra
to plunder
Questions & Answers about Piraten lär plundra fartyget där kungen bor.
How would I use the phrasal genitive taught in this lesson to talk about the treasure of 'the ship where the king lives'?
You would attach the -s to the very end of the entire descriptive phrase, right onto the verb bor. You would say fartyget där kungen bors skatt. While this sounds a bit clunky, it is grammatically correct and very common in everyday spoken Swedish. In formal writing, you would usually rephrase it as skatten på fartyget där kungen bor.
Why does lär mean 'is likely to' here instead of 'learns'?
When lär is followed directly by a verb in the infinitive (like plundra without att), it acts as a modal verb meaning 'is likely to', 'will probably', or 'is said to'. If you wanted to say the pirate 'learns to' plunder, you would need the reflexive pronoun and att: Piraten lär sig att plundra.
Since där means 'where', could I also use som here, like fartyget som kungen bor i?
Yes, exactly! Fartyget där kungen bor (the ship where the king lives) and fartyget som kungen bor i (the ship that the king lives in) mean the exact same thing. At a B2 level, it is great to practice using both relative adverbs like där and relative pronouns with placed prepositions like som ... i.
Is fartyget the best word for 'ship' here, or could I use skeppet?
Both are perfectly fine. Fartyg is the most general word for any large marine vessel. Skepp is slightly more historic or traditional, making it a very popular choice when talking about pirates (for example, ett piratskepp). Båten (the boat) would usually imply a smaller vessel.
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