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There is actually a Swedish translation of the song! It goes:
Mitt i djungeln, den stora djungeln
Där sover lejonen
Which is easy to change to moose just going for "skogen" and "älgarna" instead. :D
And by the way, forests aren't really considered mighty in Swedish. Mäktig is used with actual power or sometimes with very rich desserts. :)
1620
The mighty chocolate mousse. I like it. (And thanks for the correction!)
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Norden har ingen kung men nordens kungen som heter älg!
The north knows no king but the king in the north whose name is moose!
Could this also mean "The moose sleeps at night" As in, the moose in an animal that is active during the day and sleeps at night?
No, natt always refers to the night, and kväll always to the evening.
Couldn't this also mean "The moose will sleep tonight."? I thought that was a thing, where using the "currently doing" form of a verb, but referring to a future time, turns it into a "will do".
It's true that the present can be used to tell the future, but - as in English - it only really works where it makes idiomatic sense to do so. Otherwise, every single present-tense sentence in this course would have to have future-tense translations.
It wouldn't be every present-tense sentence though, right? It would only be the ones that also specify a time in the future.
I mean, is there a distinction between "The moose sleeps tonight" and "The moose will sleep tonight", and this sentence can only mean one of them and not the other? If there is, I'd be curious to know what it is, since the sentence seems to fit the pattern of "will do" sentences as I described above. And if there is no such distinction, shouldn't both "sleeps" and "will sleep" be considered correct? If anything, "The moose will sleep tonight" sounds more normal to my American ear, and "The moose sleeps tonight" sounds like more of a dramatic/poetic way to say it, although both ways have essentially the same meaning.
Fair enough, you have a point. :) Still, I would only think this sentence was about the future if that has been made abundantly clear through context, and it would honestly sound a bit strange even then. That's what I mean about it making idiomatic sense. It's grammatical, for sure, but hardly a feasible interpretation.
I dunno, I feel like "tonight" is most frequently used in a future context, to refer to the upcoming night, as opposed to, say, "today", which always refers to the present. If tonight in this sentence is in the present, then "The moose is sleeping tonight" sounds more natural to me. And if tonight in the sentence is in the future, then I'd probably go with "The moose will sleep tonight". "The moose sleeps tonight" just sounds... odd. It's hard to put my finger on why, though.
Right, to be clear I'm talking only about the Swedish sentence. I would presume that it's currently night-time and the moose is currently sleeping.
That said, I agree that "is sleeping" would make for a better default. I'll change it. :)
