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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Pojken äter dem."
59 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....
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.
I don't live in the U.S... I've never seen them on store shelves or anything. I live in Canada
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 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??"
I've literally never met another american who actually likes twinkies
I live in Canada and Hostess Twinkies are sold here. In Alberta anyways. I dont think they are as good as they once were.
First time i saw a twinkie was in that zombie movie...er...um i forgot the name...oh wait its called zombieland
Same for the UK twinkies aren't nearly as common for English speaking people as you might think
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".
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.
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.
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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What kind of chimichangas are you eating that they're not mutually exclusive with cannibalism...
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...
Sounds good to me. I hear five syllables, not six. The ä is long though and so maybe takes as long as two syllables :)
How can you tell if this should be eat (current tense) or ate (past tense)? It fails ate but how would it be different?
I cannot but hear "pojken äter /om/". I get that "dem" is pronounced /dom/, but I don't even hear the /d/ sound. Is it something with me, with audio in this specific case, or is there something I don't understand?
It's very common for a d to become somewhat silent after a word that ends in an r, actually.
Ok, would anyone please let me know why "The boy's eating them" isn't considered correct here?
Contractions are not always created automatically, so sometimes we need to go in manually and correct them. I've done so for this sentence now. :)
I answered this as "Pojken äter de.". In other examples, "de" would be pronounced as "dom" too, so could somebody help me with the difference please?
Tack!
Using a slightly oldfashioned provincial grammar your line is actually a correct Swedish (oldfashioned) sentence - but meaning "They eat the boy"... Most Swedes would say that it sounds like Yoda if you use that kind of grammar, though... :-)
The boy eats "them", whatever that is. Perhaps "them" = "the carrots".
Yes, they're most commonly both pronounced dom. In dialects that do say de and dem, they're distinct.
