"I september sjunger jag mycket."
Translation:In September I sing a lot.
50 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Can you explain where in this sentence the verb is in the second place because it is in the third place in this sentence? Because In and September are 2 different words both nouns right so why do they count as 1? Sorry if this is a daft question having a hard time getting my head around this rule. Appreciate any help you can provide.
I'd prefer to say that the rule does not apply to questions (since questions are formed by changing word order, how could it?). It also does not apply to subclauses and a certain type of exclamations. I wrote some more about it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8970470
With that analysis, questions aren't an exception from the V2 rule, since the verb is still in 2nd place, it's just that they can have an empty 1st place.
One way of making sense of that analysis is claiming that questions either start with a question word, like Varför? 'Why?', which takes 1st place, or if there isn't an explicit question word, there is a 'zero question word' in its place instead.
Personally I just feel it's more helpful to say that V2 doesn't cover questions. The main thing about questions after all is that the verb must go before the subject.
In traditional Swedish grammar, you often analyse question sentences as the first slot (’fundamentet’) being ”empty”.
You are right. There are so many, because it is rather arbitrary which preposition a language will use with which verb or in which situation. They do not translate from one word directly to another, because different languages use their prepositions differently. http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-swedish/of
255
Is this a common phrasing? To me the English sentence structure seems poetic, and not one would use in everyday speech. The normal one would be "I sing a lot in September / Jag sjunger mycket i september". Do Swedes have a preference for phrasing it the other way, or is this just a quirky Duo sentence?