"Möss finns inte."
Translation:Mice do not exist.
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I've seen mice! They are real! Duo, we have a problem.
he probably ate all of them. I mean, he is an owl and all, and owls eat mice
I think he wants us to belief it so he can eat all of them by himself because no one else is looking for them anymore
That's a slightly different meaning, with a slightly different sentence construction. It would be Det finns inga möss in Swedish.
They correspond to English "no" and "not". Just like you can't say "mice do no exist", you can't say möss existerar inga.
The base form of "no" in this context is ingen. Since "there are no mice" uses the plural form, it changes to inga accordingly.
Could you explain 'the slightly different meaning' between 'There are no mice' and 'Mice do not exist'? Dependent on the context, both phrases can mean exactly the same, no? Cf. Dutch: 'Er zijn geen muizen' and 'Muizen bestaan niet'. The first sentence could have a more specific meaning, given a certain context. Same for German.
I would say that "There are no mice" could be taken to mean that there are no mice in a particular location, whereas "Mice do not exist" would be closer to "mice are imaginary like unicorns".
Exactly! But 'There are no mice' can also mean 'Mice do no exist', I think. All depends on the context.
It's a technically possible but not very likely translation, and the course is not supposed to accept every technically correct translation. So you're right, but it's not a very good candidate to accept.
That's interesting. I really do not think it should be accepted here, though obviously the intention of the phrase is the same.
Thanks, I've removed that. It must have been added by mistake.
Finns = exists? So the previous sentence about coffee could have been translated as "Yes, there exists coffee"?
"Finns" is quite difficult to translate into English. It is somewhere in between "to be" and "to exist". Sometimes the correct translation will be one and other times it will be the other.
I would recommend exposing yourself to many sentences with "finns" and try to get a feeling for the word instead of trying to find a perfect English translation.
Det finns bilar i parkering. There are cars in the carpark... finns is used more like there are
What is it that decides whether finns means "exists in reality" or the more general "is over there" sense? What made this sentence clear that mice simply dont exist, as opposed to there not being any (in some implied location), as in other examples with bread. Is it dependent on the noun (ie for mice finns = exists)? Is it because this sentence is negated? Did the conjugation of "inte" give it away?
If it's in the "over there" sense, it will be more explicit. Much like English "mice don't exist" can't really mean "over there" unless you actually state so.
Must be the Royal Organisation for Denying the Existence of Nut-eating Things.
I think some people at DUOLINGO with a sense if humor. Also, I think, to give us students a laugh. In another language course, Portuguese, if I remember correctly, there's one: "The bear is drinking beer."
I used to live in Montana. there was a news article about a bear that drank some beer that was left out and then passed out. I'm dead serious. He even prefered one brand over the other.
They have that one in German so it wouldn't surprise me if they also have it in other languages.
With all the deleted posts, I wonder who or what else doesn't exist. :-)
It's mostly "mice do exist" or terrible jokes... a little is fine but I try to keep things clutter-free to some extent if I can.
In common usage, would the implication of this sentence be more localized?
That is, rather than essentially saying "Mice are a figment of your imagination," would this sentence communicate more along the lines of, "Not in my kitchen. I clean up after every meal. Here in this house, mice do not exist"?
Unless very, very clear from context, this would be the "there are no mice in existence anywhere" sense. It doesn't take much to make it more localised, though.
My mice dont exist?! What have i been feeding the last year and a half?! O.o
Shouldn't this be translated to 'There are no mice?' Why the 'exist' word? :/
- There are no mice = Det finns inga möss
- Mice don't exist = Möss finns inte
They're different constructions in both languages, so we make the same distinction between them even though Swedish uses the same verb for both.
That would be "there are no mice", but please see above for why that isn't accepted.
I just saw one yesterday inside my oven. He was eating my pizza. Maybe he was master Splinter.
That depends - if you mean that you can say it because mice ceased to exist, then yeah, sure. But it doesn't mean e.g. "mice are ceasing to exist". It just refers to that there are no mice.
Have to agree with all the many people saying "there are no mice" should be accepted. It absolutely should. It would sound like you'd be emphasising the "möss" but "finns" absolutely could have the meaning "there are" in that sentence.
The tips have said that all the verbs in present end with an R, no exception. Och det finns "finns". An exception?
No, the tips say that
With very few exceptions, it always ends with the letter -r
Deponent verbs, i.e. ones that look like the passive but are active, don't end in an r in the present tense.
Why did I be taught to spell mouse="mus" or "musen" but now the Green Bird says "mös" is the only correct answer? I TOOK NOTES!?!
Is mice not the the plural for mouse?? And mouse in Swedish is mus so why a different word altogether for the plural?? Or am I missing something??
