"The baby wants to go to his mom."

Translation: Spädbarnet vill till sin mamma.

[cynyork]

Is the verb just understood here? Or is vill a verb on its own and not only a helping verb?

[Arnauti]

Very late answer to this question, but in Swedish, we very often say vill + direction or goal, to indicate that we want to get somewhere without specifying how we'll get there.
Jag vill hem 'I want to go home'
Most likely a verb of motion is understood.

[dantedante19]

Very common in Germanic languages..

[CXCondit]

Don't really grasp why "åka" is inappropriate here. Certain verbs can be omitted, but the pattern escapes me.

[Arnauti]

I wrote a long explanation about this here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5884363

[MatthewYung]

Is 'vill' more appropriate here than 'vill ha' because it's not a living object, so to speak?

[Arnauti]

vill when you want to verb and vill ha when you want a noun.
More info in this thread: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5892480

[Bittercress]

Why not "bebisen vill gå till sin mamma"? I understand "komma" works, but feels more like "come", rather than "go", to me.

[devalanteriel]

In Swedish, gå would mean "walk", which seems unlikely since it's a baby. Rather, the phrase is about where the baby ends up, and komma can be used for that in similar contexts.

[laureyy_]

Why is it 'sin' here and not 'sitt'?

[Arnauti]

It's because mamma is an en word.

[Plentbeest]

Does it work like that?
Spädbarnets mamma and
Spädbarnet sin mamma?
I'm surprised, I thought the sin/sitt would relate to ett barn and therefore be sitt...

[devalanteriel]

Yes, Swedish always works like that. Possessive pronouns and articles agree with that which they are describing.

Otherwise, what would even be the point of e.g. mina? :)

[Plentbeest]

Makes perfect sense. Thanks!

[Cristina144710]

Spädbarnet vill gå till sin mamma. Det är fel. Varför?

[devalanteriel]

gå means to walk, which such small babies as spädbarn cannot do.

[Cristina144710]

Ok. Men " Hunden vill gå till sin vän" stämmer det?

[devalanteriel]

Sure, that might work.

[Cristina144710]

Stort tack!

[NatalieBoa3]

So I guess it's like saying "The baby wants his mother" in English?

[devalanteriel]

Yes, exactly.

[Yama842603]

I think „The baby wants to get to his mom.” might be a more percise translation.

[devalanteriel]

Possibly, but I'd translate that as komma till instead.

[RosettaY]

Is it acceptable to translate the English sentence as: "Spädbarnet vill ha sin mamma"?

[devalanteriel]

It's perfectly natural Swedish, but much close to just "the baby wants his/her mother" than the version with "to go to".

[RosettaY]

Thank you for your answer, but if "ett spädbarn" cannot "gå till sin mamma", why can an English baby wants to go to his mom"?

[devalanteriel]

Swedish gå isn't very versatile - it explicitly means "walk" in some way. But English "go" is much more versatile and doesn't really have that restriction in practice. So they don't quite literally translate one-to-one.

[RosettaY]

Thank you, I understand now. I was a little bit irritated, because a Swedish and an English baby would presumably have the same ability to walk. (-;