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- "Who does he look like?"
"Who does he look like?"
Translation:Vem ser han ut som?
37 Comments
1458
It's an accepted translation and you can definitely use it in both speech and writing. The one above is a closer translation though. Vem är han lik? actually means Who(m) does he resemble? – there's a small difference in meaning between look like and resemble.
1458
Vem ser ut som han? means 'Who looks like him?' so that changes the meaning drastically. Han ser ut som vem? is the kind of question created by word order that you can do in English too, it would be 'He looks like who?' in English. I guess you could also say Som vem ser han ut? 'Like who does he look?' but it sounds a bit strained to me.
1458
'Vem ser ut han som?' would be just wrong. Verbs and their particles part pretty easily in Swedish, so that other important parts of the sentence very often go between them.
I am not Arnauti :), but I have some hints.
If the verb comes before the subject, then the subject splits the verb and the particle:
Tycker du om honom? (question)
Naturligtvis tycker jag om honom. (v2-rule)
If there is an adverbial after the verb, then it splits the verb and the particle:
Jag tycker inte om honom. (inte)
Du tycker kanske om mig. (kanske).
If the verb comes before the subject and you have an adverbial inside the sentence, then both the subject and the adverbial are placed between the verb and the particle:
Tycker du kanske om honom? (question + kanske)
Naturligtvis tycker jag inte om honom. (V2-rule + inte).
As you know, the verb normally comes second: han ser ut som. And for questions, you move the verb to first position instead.
But with phrasal verbs, you only move the first word of the phrasal verb - i.e. the word that's actually a verb in its own right.
So if you have han ser ut som, you move the first word ser of the phrasal verb ser ut som in front, and end up with ser han ut som.