"He is not drinking the beer."
Translation:Han dricker inte ölet.
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It's hard to think of a direct English equivalent since Swedes are so much more direct in what they say. For instance, in English it would be sufficient to say "This morning I had a coffee." In Swedish, you never HAVE a coffee or HAVE a beer, you DRINK a coffee, DRINK a beer, EAT a sandwich, etc. They are very particular, so it makes perfect sense that they would differentiate between drinking beer and ordering a unit of beer. :)
813
Is it accurate to say that "Ett öl" is treating "beer" as a mass noun and "En öl" is referring to it as a typical, singular noun?
813
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun
For example, "rope", "string", "water", "oil", "beer", "paper" and so on refer to the general concept or an unspecified quantity of the substance, while "a rope", "the oil" and so on refer to a specific item thereof, a "count noun".
ej is a formal word that means the same as inte. It's used quite a bit on signs, but basically never in speech.
When you type something that is not a correct answer, the machine tries to match your input to the closest accepted answer. Because of this, you can sometimes get shown words that are only accepted, not taught.
Since I don't know what you put, I can't explain to you why it wasn't accepted.