"He was forced to wait."
Translation:Han blev tvungen att vänta.
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Could 'han var tvungen att vänta' also be correct? What is the nuance between the two?
Yes, it's accepted too.
The construction with "blev tvungen" implies something happened that made him have to wait. The construction "var tvungen" sounds like he had to wait from the very beginning.
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Ah, I was going ask if "became obliged" was an appropriate literal translation. Thanks for confirming my question before I asked it :)
'han var tvungen...' sounds much more informal and is afaik much more used esp in spoken S. just my two öre... (native / left 20+ y a ;-) )
So forced and obliged are the same in Swedish? In English they are very different words.
In the sense of being indebted, such as for a favor received, the Swedish word for “obliged” is “skyldig”.
I am still so very confused about when to use "att." Can someone direct me to a good resource?
It's tricky. There's this post: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/7075383
Edit. that post doesn't really cover this case: after a participle (or adjective), you'll always have to have att.
But would 'han måste vänta' not alter the spirit of the sentence being taught?
På finlandssvenska är "han måste vänta" den överlägset bästa översättningen av "he was forced to wait".
Vet inte hur det är officiellt, men själv hör jag det knappast och säger det inte heller. Det är måsta på, det är inte tvunget.
Misstänkte nästan att tvungen inte direkt används. Jag har märkt att man kan böja måste på finlandssvenska, det är jag lite avundsjuk på :).
Quite often i get "Mark all correct translations" tasks before learning the actual word. Is it just a feature, or a bug?
Hard to say for sure. Duo's had a bug previously where it forgot to teach you a word or two during an initial lesson, only to carry on as usual afterwards. Maybe that's what happened? There's also the problem that if you have two synonymous words and you've learned one, Duo occasionally just assumes you know the other one as well. Some languages have a fair number of terribly annoying multiple-choice questions because of this.
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It seems that there are sometimes two versions of the same lesson, one the normal lesson and one that looks like a review. Sometimes the review lesson pops up before the normal lesson, which means you are asked multiple-choice questions that you don't yet know how to answer. If that happens, exit the lesson and restart. Usually (90%+ of the time) this will put you back in the right place. I've also had to deal with this in the Russian course.
That's also true. I think I've encountered it in every course I've tried.
Did you read the Tips & Notes for this section? https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Verbs%3A-Modal (may not be available if you're on mobile)
Basically the mode in modal is like English 'mode' meaning 'way'. Modal verbs are verbs like vill 'want to', måste 'must' and so on. They're usually combined with another verb, like here in the infinitive (att vänta). They add a certain kind of 'how' to other verbs. Like, eat is neutral, but want to eat is a special modality.
That's pretty much all there is to it, but they tend to look different than normal verbs – normal verbs would end in -ar or -er in the present tense, but verbs like vill and måste of course look very different.