"Pojken äter dem."
Translation:The boy eats them.
43 Comments
It's rather interesting that most English speakers seem to assume that "dem" would refer to people. "Dem" would definitely refer to some edible things in this case, not people....
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WHAT!!!! So you are telling me, you live in an English speaking nation, and you do not know what TWINKIES are!!!!! They are store bought pastries with whipped cream inside of them. They are tasty, but they are bad for the body. When the company went out of business, there were riots in the streets until some millionaire bought the company. It was madness!!! I, personally, do not care for them. But most Americans do.
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I don't live in the U.S... I've never seen them on store shelves or anything. I live in Canada
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It might come as a shock to you, but most English speaking people don't know what the Hershey bar is either.
I know what they are but live in the UK and was under the impression they're only sold in the United States of America.
I live in Canada and Hostess Twinkies are sold here. In Alberta anyways. I dont think they are as good as they once were.
I only knew it was a kind of food thanks to Egon in Ghostbusters. It could have been fictonal food for all I knew. It was quite a confusing scene for a child in the UK in the 80s, with no internet to search for the answer to the question "What on Earth is a Twinky??"
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I think it's because ealier lessons have primed us to think dem refers to people. Twice, I've gotten this one wrong when I recoiled from the thought and hastily tried to answer with "it" instead of "them".
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Yes, who do English speakers think that? Can anyone explain?
Native english speaker here. This topic is referring to people mostly. Jag tycker om henne, De älskar oss, etc. We make the connection a little ways into the lesson that this is mostly referring to people and then we see "The boy eats them." so we don't instantly break the connection that this topic isn't just about people, but could actually (hopefully in this case) be about foods or something else you would eat.
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Why wouldnt it specify exactly what it eats. The boy eats food, the boy eats meat. The boy loves turtles. I guess its a response that left us out of context. "Who ate all the chocolate? The boy eats them." Idk, its just different.
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Like any other pronoun, it's used for convenience but is ambiguous out of context. Most of the exercises in Duolingo lack context but you can still do them.
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lol, thought something alike! (unless they are refering to the oranges or some other edible things)
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ja, I guess these have been thrown in to make you really think about what you are saying haha.
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It's just the language. When you say blood, some people who are learning english call it blood, like ooze's oo. I don't know. That was a bad example, but you get what I mean. Or maybe it's just the voice. You could search it up and see what it sounds like, or something like that.
Is there a way to tell between eating them (the food items) or them (the people) like there is with sin and hennes?
No, not really. But I suppose one would hope he's eating food, not people...
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Sounds good to me. I hear five syllables, not six. The ä is long though and so maybe takes as long as two syllables :)
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How can you tell if this should be eat (current tense) or ate (past tense)? It fails ate but how would it be different?
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sometimes when i got weird sentences, it really makes me think to make sure my translation is true or not
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Hahaha these lessons went from just helpful, ti helpful and weird! I love it!
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The use of "them" in English generally follows an established noun, otherwise we wouldn't know what "them" refers to specifically and would default to people, which I would say in my experience makes up a enormous portion of the use of the word "them" and other collective nouns.
So if there was a "What about insert food item here?" we would reply with "the boy eats them."
Just saying "The boy eats them" makes for a rather concerning sentence.
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What I am confused about is not "den" but the translation of "ater" (sorry about the lack of accent markings but I'm not working with a Swedish alphabet). I translated it as "eat" instead of "ate" them. How do you know how to translate the verb into the proper tense when multiple forms are correct?
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äter = eats
åt = ate
I don't think I see what multiple forms you are referring to.
