"Hundens ägare har försvunnit."

Translation: The dog's owner has disappeared.

[darian612]

I put "The dog owner has disappeared". Would this mean or translate differently than the original sentence? Thanks

[Gabriel_Uppsala]

"Dog's owner" is correct. I am not an expert in English or a native speaker, but apparently the genitive "'s" is required in this case.

[brombaerret]

I'm a native English speaker. In my opinion "the dog owner" is grammatically correct but semantically different from "the dog's owner"

• "the dog owner" is the owner of A dog or SOME dogs (indefinite)

• "the dog's owner" is the owner of THE dog (definite, talking about a specific, singular dog)

Since the Swedish sentence is talking about a specific dog, then only "the dog's owner" is a correct translation.

[sotnosen93]

As a native Swedish speaker, I agree and would like to add that "dog owner" translates to "hundägare".

[Bluthund]

How can you tell if ägare is singular or plural in this sentence?

[Blehg]

You can't :)

Edit: You could use a different genitive construction here if you wanted to make it more clear:

Ägaren till hunden har försvunnit = The owner of the dog has disappeared.
Ägarna till hunden har försvunnit = The owners of the dog have disappeared.

[smailVatan3]

"The dog owner has disappeared" is not true because ?

[JimNolt]

The term "dog owner" is sometimes used in English. For example, "I don't know anything about cats because I'm a dog owner." In this case, however, the Swedish "hundens ägare" means "dog's owner" or "owner of the dog."

[Gabriel_Uppsala]

"Dog's owner" is correct. I am not an expert in English or a native speaker, but apparently the genitive "'s" is required in this case.

[Stephen874691]

So why not the direct translation, "The dogs owner has dissapeared"

[Gabriel_Uppsala]

"Dog's owner" is correct. I am not an expert in English or a native speaker, but apparently the genitive "'s" is required in this case.

[degrasseme]

Duo doesn't notice punctuation.

[deactivated user]

For whatever reason, I am having difficulty memorizing verbs that begin with för-. It just occurred to me that perhaps these verbs are compound verbs or verbs created by verb-ifing (I know this is not a word) other words. Can someone please comment on this thought? Thank you.

[loukaki]

Yes :) It's a compound verb I believe. It has been borrowed from Low German 'vor-' but ultimately it seems to come from Proto-Germanic for 'before' or 'in front of'. If you search for a Swedish verb which begins with 'för-' on wiktionary you can see the word etymology e.g. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/försvinna

There is also a page with Swedish words which use 'för-' as a prefix - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swedish_words_prefixed_with_för-

[deactivated user]

Thank you, loukaki! I had not found this wiki page before. This helps a lot.

[ZoranTodor]

'The dog owner' should be accepted.

[degrasseme]

No that would be hundägaren.