40 Comments
Would "That is our child" make more sense, as a translation?
I guess since we are talking about a child we should use "Hen" or "Hon" instead of "It".
889
It does not refer to the child here, it's a formal subject much like it in It is raining. We usually accept that as a translation in these cases, but if we really wanted to say That is our child, we would have said Det där är vårt barn.
So in this case that would be like saying "What's that noise?" "It is our child", where the "it" doesn't directly refer to the child in question?
I just never talk like that about my children, as if they are simply a "thing." That seems to remove their "human-ness", doesn't it?
When learning, we should try to understand the world as seen through another languages. Swedish is a language that doesn't have gender in its words, so maybe you shouldn't relate much the human part with this particular language.
In my opinion, it sounds even more respectful, concerning life as a whole, and not focused on human culture/living.
- 22
It's not ambiguous--look at the possessive pronoun. It's vårt, which means it is a single child. If it was more than one child, they would use våra instead.
- 22
Yeah, but you can usually use context clues to figure out what it is (like, jag har barn for I have children and jag har ETT barn for I have A child). It's rarely ambiguous.
But with "Hans" or "Hennes" it could be, couldn't it ? As in "Det är hans barn"
- 22
I actually feel like you would probably say "De är hans barn" if there is more than one child, but I'm not a native swede so I don't know for sure.
There might be regional differences, but I would definitely say "Det är hans barn".
Yea but if it's not "it is". Like "Jag tycker om hans barn". No way to know ?
Could someone please tell me the differences between ditt, er, ert, dina, din, vart (maybe I missed something) please help, it's really confusing
I believe that "ni" is also an informal form of singular "you." Does this mean that "er," "ert," and "era" are also?
As explained here in the comments, you can tell from the possessive "vårt" that it's a single child. Had it been more than one, it would have been "våra barn".
The TTS pronounces de wrong:
"de"= /dom/
"det"= /de/ [Latin vowel pronunciation]
So I heard that Swedish added a third gender-neutral pronoun, hen. Would that be used here instead? Also, what are the possessives for hen?
- 889
Det does not refer to the child here, it's a formal subject much like it in It is raining. Possessive form of hen is hens.
So what's the difference between 'vår' and 'vårt'? Does it depend on whether the noun is 'ett' or 'en'?
- 889
vårat is a colloquial form of vårt. I recommend never using it in writing, it looks very informal.
våras is not a form of the word vår as in 'our', though there is a verb våras which is related to the word vår 'spring'. It is used like this: Det våras meaning 'it is becoming spring' or 'spring is coming', also in an abstract sense to mean 'things are looking up'. Most notably this verb was used to translate the titles of Mel Brooks films starting with 'Young Frankenstein' = Det våras för Frankenstein. It's a pretty rare verb otherwise :)
I can't tell when "Det" is traslated as it or that in this sentence. I used "That is our child" and it called me wrong. Why?
Please refer to Arnauti's reply above - though note that I don't quite agree with him; I think it should be accepted.
vår means "our", so it's the plural pronoun but whether the thing being "owned" is in the singular or in the plural depends on its ending in Swedish:
- vår = singular en-words
- vårt = singular ett-words
- våra = plurals
