"The baby wants to go to his mom."
Translation:Spädbarnet vill till sin mamma.
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Is the verb just understood here? Or is vill a verb on its own and not only a helping verb?
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.
It works similarly in Polish too, we add 'do' eng 'to', eg. Chcę do domu 'I want to (go) home' Chcę do mamy 'I want to (go) to mom' Interesting
Don't really grasp why "åka" is inappropriate here. Certain verbs can be omitted, but the pattern escapes me.
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...
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? :)
gå means to walk, which such small babies as spädbarn cannot do.
Is 'vill' more appropriate here than 'vill ha' because it's not a living object, so to speak?
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
Why not "bebisen vill gå till sin mamma"? I understand "komma" works, but feels more like "come", rather than "go", to me.
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.
It's perfectly natural Swedish, but much close to just "the baby wants his/her mother" than the version with "to go to".
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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"?
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.
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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. (-;
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OK, after reading all the comments here I still don't understand why "vill gå" is wrong. The argument that babies can't walk is just silly and clearly made by somebody who doesn't have a child. Babies can sometimes walk as early as 9 months and most of them walk when they are about 12 months old. And it has nothing to do with the grammer anyway. If the translation with vill gå is grammatically correct then please accept it.
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By the way an English sentence: baby wants to his mum... should be given, if vill gå is not accepted. Otherwise you are just confusing everybody as we have to be constantly guessing what you have meant...
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But the baby wants to his mum makes no sense in English. The two languages just use different constructions and we have to learn the differences, we cant do that if word for word translations whichmake no sense in one or other language are accepted.