Breakdown of Skolan börjar den trettonde augusti.
skolan
the school
börja
to start
den
the (with en-words)
augusti
August
Questions & Answers about Skolan börjar den trettonde augusti.
Why does the Swedish sentence use Skolan (the school) when the English translation just says "School"?
In Swedish, general institutions like school, work, or church often take the definite form (skolan = the school) when making general statements about them. While English leaves "the" out for general statements like "School starts," Swedish requires it here.
The English translation says "on the thirteenth", so why isn't there a word for "on" in the Swedish sentence?
When stating dates in Swedish, you don't use a preposition like "on". You simply use the definite article den directly before the number and month. Adding a word like på here would sound unnatural.
How is the word trettonde (thirteenth) formed?
To turn regular numbers into ordinal numbers (words that show rank, like 1st, 2nd, 13th), Swedish adds specific endings. For numbers 11 and up, you generally add -te or -nde. Here, the number 13 (tretton) adds -de to become trettonde.
Why is the month augusti written with a lowercase letter?
Unlike in English, days of the week, months, and languages are not capitalized in Swedish unless they appear at the very beginning of a sentence.