"Ænderne svømmer ikke når svømmebassinet intet vand har."

Translation: The ducks do not swim when the pool has no water.

[Demetroid]

Does the Danish sentence have correct word order? "svømmebassinet intet vand har" looks very strange, shouldn't it be: "svømmebassinet har intet vand"

[morbrorper]

To speakers of Swedish, this sounds old-fashioned or poetic. We would ordinarily say "när simbassängen inte har något vatten", and I believe you can say "når svømmebassinet ikke har noget vand" in Danish.

[ms.zirly]

I think it has something to do with the subordinate clause - here it starts with 'når'. In these clauses the word order changes significantly, but I'm not 100 % sure.

[Demetroid]

No, in subordinate clause word order changes from (subject verb adverb) to (subject adverb verb). But here it goes like: (subject object verb) - doesn't make any sense, must be a mistake!

[mipani]

I am German, and when I translate the second part word by word into German without changing anything: "... wenn das Schwimmbecken kein Wasser hat." it is perfect. Nonetheless, the Danish sentence confused me, since I haven't seen such a word order before in Danish sentences here on Duolingo.

[ms.zirly]

So I looked it up in the text book and it says that in the subordinate clause the word order is: - subject - 'ikke' / adverb like 'altid' and also noun with 'ingen' - verb - object. So I guess that 'intet vand' is counted as similar to 'ingen'

[Demetroid]

Still, none of the correct word orders allow for the verb to be the last item in the sentence. If I run into this sentence again, I'll make sure to report it to the developers.

[niscate]

I'm not sure about Danish but in an equivalent German sentence, this word order would be 100 % correct. Since there are many similarities like this between the two languages, I'd say this sentence is correct.

[ms.zirly]

Sorry, but for example sentence like 'Ministeren siger at journalisterne ingen informationer har.' is totally correct. So yeah, there are certain types of sentences that allow the verb the be at the last position

[tais.smp]

I just started reading some books in anish, and every once in a while they invert the order of the words, away from all inversion rules.

Thus, my understanding is that your suggestion is correct, and it would be the simple way of writing. However this rearrangement is also fine.

[Timmy_The_Kid]

why can't you say "har ikke vand"?

[Bluthund]

I think "har ikke vand" negates the verb ("does not have water") whereas "har intet vand" negates the subject ("has no water")

[Mon.Alisa]

That sounded like hardcore rapping to me.

[marifig143]

that was hard to say

[HastaLaVista83]

As far as I understand it, this Danish sentence is absolutely correct!

It consists of a main clause "Ænderne svømmer ikke..." and a subordinate clause "...når svømmebassinet intet vand har". Subordinate clauses require the syntax to differ.

I do not eat the apple = Jeg spiser ikke æblet

... because I do not eat the apple = ... fordi jeg ikke spiser æblet

Certain words (here "ikke" will be placed before the verb in subordinate clauses. It seems that the word "intet" causes the "intet vand" to go before the verb.

[J.TEKEL]

when danish becomes german

[FredrikHen8]

Svømmebassinet was the pool, and I got "wrong" for the swimming pool. Is this really serious?

[Lumen3]

I have just done the same but it just said pool as an other possible translation, and accepted swimming pool.

[Lumen3]

Does intet declines with va det?

[Rebecca73497]

I translated it to simply meaning empty, it's kind of annoying that some translations are accepted as general meanings and others, like this one, require direct word for word answers