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- "Your elephants eat."
"Your elephants eat."
Translation:Dina elefanter äter.
23 Comments
Here's some help with differentiating with din/ditt/dina and er/ert/era, it’s all about agreeing with number and gender.
din: when one person has one non-neuter object John, det är din sko = John, that is your shoe
ditt: when one person has one neuter object John, det är ditt äpple = John, that is your apple
dina: when one person has multiple objects of any gender John, det är dina skor = John, those are your shoes
er: when more than one person has one non-neuter object Barn, det är er läxa = Children, that is your homework
ert: when more than one person has one neuter object Barn, det är ert sandslott = Children, that is your sand castle
era: when more than one person has multiple objects of any gender Barn, det är era husdjur = Children, those are your pets
Note that it becomes er/ert/era because several people have the object, even if you only talk to one person: John, det är ert ansvar = John, it’s your (you and the others’) responsibility John, det är ditt ansvar = John, it’s your (yours alone) responsibility.
(I got this from reddit, the subreddit is r/svenska.)
Ok so, I have a question. What do you mean by neuter and non-neuter objects? How can I tell them apart?
106
Non-neuter nouns (also known as common nouns) are en-words while neuter nouns are ett-words. There's no surefire way to know which is which for all nouns, you mostly have to learn as you go, but from what I've heard common nouns are more, well, common.
I agree. Especially the multiple choice questions in Swedish. In this particular question they could ask for the singular vs plural your, to make it more challenging.
I often just read the sentence, then make the translation in my head before I even look at the options. :) Works for me!
Oh well, for this question in particular, you could choose era, since the word "your" is not specific to a single person or several people, so knowing this ordeal in duolingo with the caps, I decided to go for "era" instead of "Dina", and guess what, it's correct!!! So sometimes, other than following the pattern, may be some self intuition can also make the examples interesting... I know, it's not intuitive in anyway, but that may be so, if you don't choose to ignore the pattern...
I agree, when faced with multiple chioce its easy to get right when the answer is say girls and you're given the choice of apple, water or girls It should be a choice of say, the girl, girls or girl.
- 106
It could be translated as both. "Era" means that multiple people own the elephants (or that they belong to, for example, a zoo) while "dina" means that they belong to one person.
This question is two months old, but for future reference, yes but depends on context.
'Dina elefanter ater' is used when 'you' is singular. However, when you is plular, so if I'm talking to a group of guys (perhaps staff at a zoo or something) who own those elephants it would be 'Era elefanter ater'.
- 106
Short answer is that din/ditt/dina is used when the object belongs to one person, er/ert/era is used when it belongs to multiple people.
Longer answer is that er/ert/era can also belong to a business or organisation of some kind (like in this case, the elephants could belong to a zoo) or be used as a formal version of din/ditt/dina, kind of like the French "vous". The latter is very rare and (from what I've heard) kind of controversial though, so I strongly recommend that when you come across er/ert/era, you assume it's either plural owners or belonging to a business/organisation unless context clearly tells you otherwise.
