"The book is printed in China."

Translation: Boken är tryckt i Kina.

[MariaNehmeh]

Why not tryckas?

[devalanteriel]

tryckas is the infinitive passive, trycks is the present tense, and tryckt the participle.

[HoroTanuki]

Why not "bli tryckt"?

[jcstroh]

"Bli" is infinitive so the corresponding form ("är" is present tense) would be "blir". "Boken blir tryckt i Kina" means it will be printed in China. Another way of using "bli" would be to use past tense - "boken blev tryckt i Kina" - the book was printed in China; as opposed to the original "the book is printed in China.

[HoroTanuki]

thanks!

[hjorthjort]

The pronunciation of "tryckt" is off, it sounds like "dryckt"

[devalanteriel]

Sounds perfect to me.

[bigswedeej]

This sentence is boken trycks... A prior sentence was tidningarna trycks... Trycks doesnt change for singular/plural?

[devalanteriel]

No, Swedish never changes verb form for singular / plural. Practical, isn't it? :)

[alexander-sthlm]

Is there a difference in meaning between "boken är tryckt" and "boken tryckts"?

[devalanteriel]

Not usually, but it does have a possible difference, since the forms have different purpose.

• boken är tryckt focuses on the state of the object, i.e. that it exists and it has at one point in time been printed
• boken trycktes focuses on the action of printing, i.e. that the book was printed at one point in time - but it doesn't say whether the book still exists or not
• there's also boken var tryckt, which also focuses on the state, but since it's in the past tense we can safely assume that the book no longer exists

[alexander-sthlm]

Thanks, that makes sense.

[Ninon.de.Lenclos]

Devalantariel: why assume that the book no longer exist with "boken var tryckt"? If the English translation is: "the book was printed", nothing implies (in English) that the book no longer exists...

[devalanteriel]

Yeah, but consider that är tryckt also means that it was printed at a previous point in time - so var tryckt implies that this is no longer the case, i.e. the book has ceased to exist.

[Ninon.de.Lenclos]

Thank you :-)

[Gael610038]

I have struggled with this apparently simple sentence. Im wondering if maybe the sentence isnt passive, and that tryckt used as a past participle even though the sentence is present tense?

[devalanteriel]

Yes, that's correct - one of the two ways of forming the passive in Swedish is to use the past participle with an auxiliary form of vara.