"The woman drinks a cup of coffee."
Translation:Kvinnan dricker en kopp kaffe.
19 Comments
454
What confused me is that kopp is en and kaffe is ett. Kaffe is what she is drinking, so I used ett.
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The coffee is only the content of the cup. She drinks a cup filled with coffee. That way it's obvious that it's the cup that you need to use en or ett with.
That sounds like the actual cup is made out of coffee...
Edit: Prepositions are always used differently in different languages. I see that you are also learning German: you wouldn't say "eine Tasse von Kaffee" either.
As a general rule, if I am informed correctly, languages that have Latin DNA in them (including english) use a form of "of" here, while purely Germanic languages, like Swedish, Danish, and German, do not. It's just how the language developed. :)
There is a rule, a bit tricky but works with some exceptions. In your case, it's "en kopp" (a cup). The cup, is "koppen". Let's try this but with "ett". "Ett tåg" (a train). The train, is "tåget". So here is the explanation: If you put "the" in front of the word in english, and translate it to swedish, the word will end with either -en or -et. If the swedish word ends with -en, you put "en" in front of it if you mean a specific thing. If the swedish word ends with -et, you put "ett" in front of it if you mean a specific thing. This is just for singular though.
I dont understand still what I asked is why is it not ett? I know there only can be en or ett , example : its ett tåg, why it cant be en tåg? wait what is specific? I never understood that. (I'M not a native speaker)
En and ett are grammatical genders: like in German (der, die, and das) or French (le and la).
Except that in Swedish, masculine and feminine words have a long time ago merged into the common gender (en-words), and there are a lot more of these than of the neuter gender (ett) words.
You just have to learn the gender along with the word, so "en kopp" and "ett tåg". If you have no clue with a particular word, go for en, as they are much more numerous.
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So wait. You have gendered nouns and ungendered nouns, but there's only one gender? Do you still call it "gender"?
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No, all words have en (common) or ett (neuter) gender. But the words that historically used to be masculine and feminine are all 'common gender' today = en words.
Drycker would be "beverages" or "drinks" as a noun ("We served fancy drinks at the party.")
En dryck - a drink
Drycken - the drink
Drycker - drinks
Dryckerna - the drinks.
Why is there no "of" in Kvninnan dricker en kopp kaffe as in "The woman drinks a cup of coffee? Would it be incorrect to type Kvinnan dricker en kopp av kaffe?
- 840
Yes, that would be incorrect, or it would make it sound like the cup was made out of coffee. There are very many cases where we don't use av the same way you use of in English, and the relationship between container and content like here is a very good example.
