"Han leser novellen til broren sin."
Translation:He is reading his brother's short story.
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If this sentence were changed to "Han leser novollen for broren sin." would the meaning be "He's reading the short story to his brother."?
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thankyou duolingo for teaching me English. I had never seen the word novella before. so it is a short novel or story
I entered "He is reading the novella to his brother" which was accepted, but which is right? Reading the novella to someone or reading someone's novella? They are two different concepts in English.
I would argue that the correct preposition to use when reading a novella to someone would be "for". However, it's not at all uncommon for people to use "til" instead, which is why your answer was accepted here.
As long as we allow for that (and I do believe we should), the sentence is ambiguous.
I think the translation in this case is wrong. It sais: he is reading the story to his brother.
'å lese til noen' = 'to read to someone' (for them to hear)
'å lese til noe' = 'to read for something' (an exam, test)
The above sentence is ambiguous without context, and it could mean either "Han leser (novellen til broren sin.)" or "(Han leser novellen) til broren sin."
To me it isn't correct. He is not reading his brother's short story but he is reading either TO or FOR his brother
Can you give more examples like this? Try as i might, i can't make 'til' sound right to me. And why isn't it "av broren sin"?
When dealing with possession, you often use "til" in Norwegian where you would use "of" in English. Of course, you can also choose to use a genitive-s instead, so: "...sin brors novelle" ("his brother's novel").
"kommentaren til cape" = "cape's comment"
It's unclear to me why this becomes "his brother's" short story. I would think "broren sin" means "his brother" but isn't "novellen" without "sin" just "the novel"?
It's the preposition "til" that makes it a possessive, much like you could use "of" rather than a genitive s in English. You could also phrase it as "sin brors novelle".
Duo keeps a deeply flawed synonym list which we can't override. Among other things, they equate story=storey=floor, which is incorrect in most contexts and messes with our translations for "novelle", "fortelling", and "gulv".
We've complained about it for years, so I don't expect they'll change it any time soon.
Oh I didn't realize storey was the British form of story I thought it was just a mistype
The word options should include at least an "a": He's reading a short story to his brother.
This is the answer the tiles are made to form: "He is reading his brother's short story."
Of course the sentence can have your meaning as well, but word bank exercises cannot accommodate all possible translations.