"Does she eat it?"
Translation:Spiser hun det?
9 Comments
I don't understand why den is not accepted here. I understand den is for the specific gender and det is for neutral, but when there's no context, how do we know?
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Here is what I think is going on. Since the Owl did not include any context to establish a pronoun referent. "It" could be refering to any -n word or -t word. In this nebulous situation, you have to say something, so say DET. If the owl had given us a referent noun, and asked us to translate thusly: "She has the apple. Does she eat it? " you would reply : "Hun har aeblet. Spiser hun DET?" because you know that "it" refers to a -t noun. Similarly, If the Owl asked: "She has the cheese, does she eat it?" you would teply " Hun har osten. Spiser hun DEN?"
Does = gør, and yet the correct translation is Spiser hun det.Anyone care to explain?It's quite confusing to me, because i've seen this translation of Does before, but never used in a sentence.
My take on this would be that the English word "does" does indeed translate to "gør" by itself, but when it comes to forming questions or negations, Danish doesn't use do-support (nor does any other language apart from English, at least in this form), i.e. you don't need the verb "do" to form these constructions.
I agree with jjd1123, in English the use of 'do' in questions is only an auxilery- it is not actually used like the verb 'to do'.
