Verbs
Verbs do not inflect for person or number in modern standard Swedish. They inflect for the present tense, past tense, imperative, subjunctive, and indicative mode. Other tenses are formed by combinations of auxiliary verbs with infinitives or a special form of the participle called the "supine". In total there are 6 spoken active-voice forms for each verb: infinitive, imperative, present, preterite/past, supine, and past participle. The only subjunctive form used in everyday speech is vore, the past subjunctive of vara ("to be"). It is used as one way of expressing the conditional ("would be", "were"), but is optional. Except for this form, subjunctive forms are considered archaic.
Verbs may also take the passive voice. The passive voice for any verb tense is formed by appending -s to the tense. For verbs ending in -r, the -r is first removed before the -s is added. Verbs ending in -er often lose the -e- as well, other than in very formal style: stärker ("strengthens") becomes stärks or stärkes ("is strengthened"). (Exceptions are monosyllabic verbs and verbs where the root ends in -s.) Swedish uses the passive voice more frequently than English.
Read more about this topic: Swedish Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word verbs:
“He crafted his writing and loved listening to those tiny explosions when the active brutality of verbs in revolution raced into sweet established nouns to send marching across the page a newly commissioned army of words-on-maneuvers, all decorated in loops, frets, and arrowlike flourishes.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)