the noun phrase, rather than the noun itself. hästen; "the horse" – hästens "the horse's" hästen på den blommande ängens svarta man; "the horse in the flowering meadow's black mane" In formal written language, it used to be considered correct to place the genitive -s after the head of the noun phrase (hästen), though this is today considered dated, and different grammatical constructions are often used. Verbs are conjugated according to tense. One group of verbs (the ones ending in -er in present tense) has a special imperative form (generally the verb stem), but with most verbs the imperative is identical to the infinitive form. Perfect and present participles as adjectival verbs are very common: Perfect participle: en stekt fisk; "a fried fish" (steka = to fry) Present participle: en stinkande fisk; "a stinking fish" (stinka = to stink) In contrast to English and many other languages, Swedish does not use the perfect participle to form the present perfect and past perfect. Rather, the auxiliary verb har ("have"), hade ("had") is followed by a special form, called the supine, used solely for this purpose (although often identical to the neuter form of the perfect participle): Perfect participle: målad, "painted" – supine målat, present perfect har målat; "have painted" Perfect participle: stekt, "fried" – supine stekt, present perfect har stekt; "have fried" Perfect participle: skriven, "written" – supine skrivit, present perfect har skrivit; "have written" When building the compound passive voice using the verb att bli, the past participle is used: den blir målad; "it's being painted" den blev målad; "it was painted" There exists also an inflected passive voice formed by adding -s, replacing the final r in the present tense: den målas; "it's being painted" den målades; "it was painted" In a subordinate clause, the auxiliary har is optional and often omitted, particularly in written Swedish. Jag ser att han (har) stekt fisken; "I see that he has fried the fish" Subjunctive mood is occasionally used for some verbs, but its use is in sharp decline and few speakers perceive the handful of commonly used verbs (as for instance: vore, månne) as separate conjugations, most of them remaining only as set of idiomatic expressions. Where other languages may use grammatical cases, Swedish uses numerous prepositions, similar to those found in English. As in modern German, prepositions formerly determined case in Swedish, but this feature can only be found in