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- "The cat does not eat the dog…
"The cat does not eat the dog's food."
Translation:Katten spiser ikke hundens mat.
11 Comments
yes. spise is more common though. Ete is from Norse, spise is from Latin. Spise is more commonly used in eastern Norwegian dialects, but both are bokmål
'Katten spiser ei hundens mat' was one of the correct answers.. I don't understand that. Is 'ei' some kind of negative?
Second thing, I haven't reached the 'negations' lesson yet (if there is one) and I'm trying to learn the rules myself. I wrote 'katten spiser hundens mat ikke', which is obviously wrong (felt right tho), however my second question is - does the negation always follow the verb or is that kind of positioning alowed in some cases? thank you
Okay, so there's a lot to address here:
First ei is an old synonym for *ikke. You can generally avoid it altogether, though its good to be aware of its existence.
Now, when you have a negator with an object of the sentence, the word order will vary based on whether the object is a noun or a pronoun. If it's a noun, the negator precedes the object:
Jeg drikker ikke mjølk.
When it's a pronoun, it follows the pronoun:
Vi liker han ikke.
I will note that you can put ikke in front of the pronoun, but that is only when you are trying to emphasize the pronoun as opposed to another:
Vi liker ikke him. - "We don't like him [but we do like somebody else].
So in this case, you want Katten spiser ikke hundens mat. because hundens mat is a noun.
Bonus word order fact: a negator will precede an adverb:
Jeg snakker ikke raskt.
Ei thing caught me completely off guard. Many thanks for a detailed explanation (to a years old question I had^^, and which I had completely forgotten about) Have yourself a lingot, good Sir.
I was thinking the correct word would be "hundenes"? Is this a gendered ending for female words, and "hund" is male?
