Breakdown of Ett tjugotal nedsatta varor krossades i den stora butiken.
ett
a, an (neuter)
stor
big
i
in
butiken
the shop
den
the (with en-words)
varan
the good
krossa
to shatter
tjugotalet
the group of around twenty
nedsatt
reduced
Questions & Answers about Ett tjugotal nedsatta varor krossades i den stora butiken.
Why do we use the singular word Ett before a phrase that means "twenty"?
The suffix -tal turns a number into a neuter noun meaning "an amount of roughly [number]". So, ett tjugotal literally means "a twenty-count" or "a group of about twenty". The article Ett is singular because it agrees with the singular noun tjugotal, not the items themselves.
Since Ett tjugotal is a singular noun, shouldn't the adjective nedsatta take a singular form too?
No, because Ett tjugotal functions as a quantifier here (similar to "a bunch of" in English). The adjective nedsatta (discounted) directly describes the actual items, varor, which is plural. Therefore, the adjective takes the plural -a ending.
What kind of word is nedsatta here?
It is the plural form of the past participle nedsatt (reduced/discounted), which comes from the phrasal verb sätta ned (to put down or to reduce). In Swedish, past participles act just like adjectives, so it gets the plural -a ending to match the plural noun varor.
Is the -s on the end of krossades what makes it a passive verb?
Exactly! The active past tense is krossade (crushed), but since the items didn't crush anything themselves—they were crushed—we use the passive s-form. Adding -s to the past tense verb gives us the passive krossades.
As a quick refresher, why do we need both den and the -en ending in den stora butiken?
This is a classic example of Swedish "double definiteness." When you have a definite noun modified by an adjective, you must use the independent article (den), the definite form of the adjective (stora), and the definite suffix attached to the noun itself (butiken).
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