27 Comments
As someone speaking english most of the time, what is it you hear first here...
When you talk about amounts, English uses a preposition ”a glass OF water”, ”a cup OF sugar”, but Swedish doesn’t, so it’s ”ett glas vatten” and ”en kopp socker”.
But you CAN say "en kopp med socker" if you want to. That is literally "a cup with sugar". It's not wrong to say that.
In lieu of Lundgren's response, it is the same way in German. English just needs a preposition here, like other Romance languages would.
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Yep. I like to think of English as Germanic words with Romantic grammar... not totally accurate but it's certainly an interesting mix.
Actually, its more like German, Dutch, and French words mixed in as French and the Netherlands were so close to England and highly influenced the language in the early modern age.
Now, is "cup" in this case also a measurement? I don't imagine the Swedish language bothers to have a separate word for a measurement it doesn't use.
Yes, it can be used as both. Same thing in Finnish, Norwegian etc.. If you wanna use european measurements you can say for example en deciliter socker.
I don't think it sounds as natural as "A cup of sugar," but it doesn't seem wrong either. Probably, yes.
It's a "spoonful", how much do you need to take your medicine? :p
The original Swedish translation said med lite socker i botten - "with some sugar at the bottom [of the cup]", but a more recent translation is more faithful to the original.
