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- "Manden og kvinden fulgtes ad…
"Manden og kvinden fulgtes ad ned til havet."
Translation:The man and the woman followed each other down to the sea.
11 Comments
The passive is used in Danish where it wouldn't make any sense in English (such as "Vi ses" is good Danish but "We will be seen/We are seen" has a completely different meaning in English). I think "to be followed by" would be more "at blive efterfulgt af" or "efterfølges af".
To actually answer your question though, this means that they followed each other there (so basically went together, thinking about this too long is making me realise how little sense English makes)
It's a matter if the word order here. "Manden og kvinden fulgtes ad" strictly means they went together and might be somewhat idiomatic.
"Manden fulgtes af kvinden" is probably what you think of and means that the man was being followed by the woman or that the woman comes after the man in some sequence. You could and probably would instead say "manden blev fulgt af kvinden" but it's the same meaning.
Hope that helps
Eh... kinda but not really. Grammatically I think it's technically fine, but it does end up saying something that doesn't make much sense when you think about it. You'd need to follow something, so it makes a bit of a paradox.
On the other hand, the line has a kind of poetic feel to it. As in they sort of drifted inevitably towards the sea together, without planning to.
But idk, maybe I'm overanalysing it.
Following each other is technically impossible. If we ignore meaningfulness, and insist on "each other"it would require an added "hinanden". If we want to say that they were being followed the construct would be "blev fulgt". The correct translation should be "The man and the woman were followed down to the sea."