"Han brukar komma hem sent."

Translation: He usually comes home late.

[ErixTheRed]

What's the difference between hem and hemma?

[Zmrzlina]

As with hit and här, it's about direction and location.
Hem = to home
Hemma = at home

Thus, you say "han går hem" but "jag är hemma".

[MartijnOhms]

In old fashioned English one could say: He is wont to come home late. Wont: in the habit of doing. In Dutch: gewoonte. Hij heeft de gewoonte laat naar huis te komen.

[LittleBlueOwl]

i have a quick question, "comes" is not an infinitive in english, is it? is there a different rule in swedish or is it just this word in particular?

[devalanteriel]

Quite correct, the English infinitive would be [to] come.

In Swedish, we have a verb for to usually do something: (att) bruka [some verb]. So the reason it isn't kommer is because brukar modifies the upcoming verb to an infinitive, but is itself in third person singular.

[Arnauti]

I'd just like to add that this happens because in English, you don't use used to in the present tense, it's a quirk of English. So in the past tense, this could have been He used to come home late with the infinitive too.

[LittleBlueOwl]

right, that makes sense, thanks very much again!

[as2907]

I'm not sure. To me "I used to do something" conveys the idea that now I don't do that any more. So "He used to come home late" implies that he does not come home late now. Is that so with "Han brukade komma hem sent" in Swedish?

[Arnauti]

I'm not sure if there's a difference between Swedish and English here or not, maybe there is. I'm pretty sure it doesn't always imply that in English either though, think about how it could be used in a context of a story told in the past tense. And generally you probably wouldn't say Han brukade komma hem sent in Swedish either if he still brukar komma hem sent, then we'd say that instead. But maybe you're onto something.

[LittleBlueOwl]

thanks for explaining!

[Yerrick]

The closest analogous verb in English might be "tends to [verb]."

[Arnauti]

You have the same verb, use to, it's just that you don't use it in the present tense.

[Yerrick]

Interesting, apparently Old English used to use "brucan" for this purpose as well, but when we adopted the word "use" from Latin via French, it also displaced "brucan" to give "use" a secondary meaning. That doesn't explain why there's this strange gap in the standard present tense, though... I wonder if it was some sort of parallelism with "use" that led "usually" to replace it in that tense.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/use#Etymology_2

[MarkBorkBorkBork]

Have a lingot :)

[Jakob223]

Brukar can be thought of sort of like "tends". He tends to come home late.

[as2907]

What about "he's wont to come home late"?

[MarkBorkBorkBork]

That would be Han är van att komma hem sent.

[shevlane]

Why would 'normally' be rejected as a translation of 'brukar'?

[MarkBorkBorkBork]

Well that's largely synonymous in English, I don't know if it would be in Swedish. Perhaps one of the natives will comment?

[lina88lee]

i don't understand why the word sen (late) came with ett (sent). Can someone explains me?

[Berniebud]

The "-t" forms for many adjectives also double as their adverb forms.

"Sen" is strictly an adjective, but "Sent" can be used as either an adjective or an adverb.

[lina88lee]

thanks for the explanation! So everytime I use it as an adverb I can put the -t in the end?

[Berniebud]

Yes. If you're turning an adjective into an adverb, you add the "-t".

[arsenical]

I put "He often comes home late" and got marked wrong. But "usually" and "often" mean the same thing, I think?

[MarkBorkBorkBork]

I would say often is less frequently than usually.

[arsenical]

Ah, okay. I guess I just use them interchangeably too much. Tack :)

[Jadestar1331]

How about he is akin to coming home late. I feel like used to is synonymous with akin in a present tense context, but it is a rather uncommon word.