48 Comments
Why is this sentence not "Han vet inte det heller"? What causes the pronouns to be where they are here?
You could say that as well, but it’s common with ”veta” to front the pronoun for emphasis. You say ”jag vet inte”, but if you include ”det” it’s just more common to say ”Det vet jag inte”. It literally translates as ”That I don’t know” but it’s how we normally say it.
You say "front the pronoun" but you specifically mean, "front the object pronoun" correct?
The question uses "inte" before the pronoun, but in the example you used in this comment you used "inte" after the pronoun. Are both options always correct?
There's also a slight difference in meaning:
Det vet inte han heller means that someone else doesn't know, and this guy also doesn't know.
Han vet inte det heller can mean that, but it could also mean (depending on which word you stress when you pronounce it) that this guy doesn't know thing A, and also doesn't know thing B.
It's a fine line, though, and mostly, both would work.
If you don't mind, could you tell me how you would stress it differently? That's something that seems really essential to learning the language, yet I haven't seen any mention of it yet in the course.
Hmm ... it was clearer in my head when I wrote that earlier today than it is now.
Essentially, like in other languages, you would put the stress on different words depending on what the above sentence is referring to. (It must be referring to something said earlier, because of the heller = (n)either.)
The TTS stresses both "vet" and "inte" in this sentence in my opinion, which sounds a bit strange (but then again she and I aren't speaking the same dialect, so I might be wrong).
If we skip the heller in this case for simplicity, you could say:
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Det vet inte han, which might refer to a man knowing that there will be a suprise party for him, for not knowing that his favorite artist will perform there, the last bit being the "det". So he knows something, but not that bit.
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Det vet han inte, which might be that someone suspects something, but he isn't sure, which is important to the speaker.
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Det vet han inte, I know something but he doesn't.
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Det vet han inte, here the important (or maybe hotly debated) thing is that he really doesn't know.
I don't know if this makes it clearer for anyone, but I sure confused myself :-)
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No no, you explained that very clearly (tydligt), and it makes sense. English would use a similar intonation, stressing those same words for the difference in meaning.
The only thing I don't underbar is why you put the "inte" before "han" in the first example, but in the rest it's after the subject.
That's just how they happened to come to my mind...
In fact, han and inte could switch places in any of my sentences above, except for the last one where it would sound unnatural.
Could this also mean 'it does not know him either' in certain situations? I know that translation would most likely be less common but if you were talking about an animal or something..?
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It can't mean that, for two reasons: a) since han is in the subject form (it would have to be honom if it were 'him') and b) because when you 'know' people, the verb is känner. So that sentence would have to be Det känner inte honom heller.
Looks ungrammatical. "Neither" is used when you are talking about two things like "Neither you nor he knows it". You can use it as a pronoun and say "Neither knows it" instead of having two pronouns in a row like in your version, but it wouldn't be a translation of this Swedish exercise. We don't know what two things neither refers to in my example. You could say "He knows neither", but we don't know what two things he doesn't know in this case. Again, not a good translation. Your version could be a phrase to be extended into a complete sentence like: "He neither knows it nor cares [about it]".
That doesn't he know either. Sounds a bit weird but not wrong. I'm not an English native(German), sooo why is this wrong?
German and Swedish are both v2 languages, meaning that the verb wants to go second.
So if you have a sentence like Er weiß das nicht, the verb is second and it corresponds to "He doesn't know that" in English.
Now, if you move the "that" to the front, you need to move the verb in German or Swedish so that it's still in second position, and you get Das weiß er nicht - but in English, you don't move the verb because it doesn't have v2 rules, so you still get "That he doesn't know".
Compare it to "That knows not he either" and perhaps it'll sound less strange, if absurdly unidiomatic. :)
By the way, do have a look at my reply to fraumueller above - that might be of use to you!
Can you reorganize sentences like this in other cases? For example, can I say "Det tar jag" or "Honom älsker hon"?
Occasionally, for emphasis. But it's somewhat of an advanced topic and it's far more often severely unidiomatic or downright ungrammatical than not.
No, han is he. The third-person singular of English do is does.
I do, you do, he does, it does, they do.
Why do I put the pronoun before 'inte' in "Det vet jag inte." and behind it in the example sentence?
It's not strictly ungrammatical but really not a good translation either.
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I wonder if English forbids: That he does not know either. with a strong emphasis on THAT.
That absolutely works in English given proper context and prosody, but should perhaps not be accepted as it isn't really a very standard phrasing otherwise.
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OK, (because of a better agreement with the word order when you translate word by word, when clock is ticking, one is more time efficient to go for that sentence, but I agree)
I know how frustrating that is, but we can't really use the timed practice sessions as a guideline for which translations to accept.
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I agree, I just wanted to be reassured that I don't miss something in my grasp of English. Thanks.
No, that's actually ungrammatical. Like saying "That doesn't either he know", in a way.
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Is it necessary to include implied pronouns in Swedish? The version of this statement I hear most often is "he does not know either." Not that the pronoun is uncommon, it just got me thinking.
Also, out of curiousity, how would you say "either he knows, or he doesn't?" Even though it's not an exact translation I assume something like "han vet det eller inte" would suffice.
det here is closer to "that" than to "it", if that makes sense. You can say han vet inte ("he doesn't know"), and han vet inte det ("he doesn't know that/it"). But for det vet inte han heller, you can't leave det out. If we use less idiomatic English, in the passive, it's easier to see why: you could say "that isn't known by him" but not "isn't known by him". Basically the same reason.
I think it must be"Det var jag inte heller"can any one explain for me why do we have inte before han even though it is not a rakordföljd
You probably mean det var han inte heller. The most normal word order is simply det var inte han, with inte directly after the verb. Then you add heller at the end.
Strange when I translate it literary it is:"It know not he either"? So why not:"Han vet inte det heller" Dat weet hij ook niet/Hij weet het ook niet/ That does he not know either, maybe this is the way to understand the order of the words?
