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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Älgarna"
57 Comments
2396
Of course. People think I'm kidding...but no realli! She was Karving her initials øn the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"
Disregard below, "the elks" is now acceptable.
"Älgarna" Translation: The mooses
The plural of elk is elks and the plural of moose is moose. But "the elks" was wrong and apparently "the mooses" is right.
- 2396
Looking at some dictionaries it seems like the two right answers should be swapped. In English "The mooses" is considered incorrect because it comes from the Algonquin word, and they did not pluralize by adding an 's'. Therefore we treat it like an invariant noun and don't change it in the plural. Elk, on the other hand comes from the same root that Älg does, therefore we do add an 'S' at the end to pluralize it. However, as @jd30 has pointed out, there are some dialects of English which don't apparently use elks, but treat that verb as invariant as well. If that's the case, I wonder if that dialect does so because they're both horned ruminants. If that's one direction English is going as a language, we may want to consider bringing back a plural form of articles to distinguish. :-D
A lot of eaten animals have an invariant plural. Not only moose and elk but also deer and sheep. Not to mention fish.
- 2396
True, and also something of note is that in English we tend to refer to animals by their English name when dealing with them on the farm (swine, cow, chicken, sheep, etc) but their French name when referring to them as food: beef, poultry, mutton, pork, etc. Linguists point to this being a remnant of the Norman conquest of England. I just think it's neat. I do think that, more and more, that distinction is disappearing, but neat nonetheless.
In my dialect of American English, the plural of "elk" is "elk." "Elks" may be another variant.
Maybe it's because elks are so rare in my area of America, we just don't know the "proper" plural, but I've only ever heard elks as the plural here. Also, Firefox accepts elks as properly spelled and mooses as incorrect; though, to be fair, Firefox's dictionary has the vocabulary of a nine year old, so I wouldn't necessarily trust its judgment.
Elk is plural in Wisconsin as well, Elks seems to be the the plural in Maryland. Maybe the lack of "s" in the plural form is a Midwestern vernacular? As a side note, people look at you funny when you wander around Washington D.C. asking them what the plural of elk is and then asking them where they are from.
Mr Palmer, you are awesome. Have a lingot, because anyone willing to survey this on the street deserves at least that much for his efforts!
Actually, both "elks" and "elk" are correct depending on context. As a general rule, in the context of hunting, game animals have invariant plurals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plurals#Nouns_with_identical_singular_and_plural
- 278
Are there rules how to pronounce swedish because it seems a bit weird to me. Like in jag I don't hear the /g/ pronounced
of course there are rules. Generally /g/ at the end is silent. The rules are: pronounce as [g] as in great when preceeding a,o,u,ĺ or unstressed e. Pronounce as [j] as English y in yes before e,i,y,ä,ö and after l and r. E.g. varg - [varj] There are some consonant combinations that are read differently depending on the context (what is before and what is after). You can look here: http://www.onlineswedish.com/pronounce.php but many of the rules will become natural for you if you do the exercises and try to notice the patterns yourself.
I see your point Alec Hirschberg. However, it is correct in many (if not all) dialects of English to say "one fish", "several fish" when they are of the same species and "several fishes" when they are of multiple species as in "all the fishes in the deep blue sea", it is never correct in English (so far as I know) to say "mooses". It is quite entertaining however; almost as good as "moosen"! (Thanks pancakehiatt; I appreciated your question :-)) By the way, if "loosen" means to make something more loose, does "moosen" mean to make something more moose? Anyone game for a spot of gene splicing? :-D
Despite it technically being incorrect grammer, could you possibly add "mooses" as an accepted word, so that those of us who are trying to artificially mark plurality in our answer may do so? What is mean by this is that, for example, when I talk about mutiple fish, I say fish, but when I see fiskar come up, I write fishes, despite that not being how i speak, because it's a way to signify plurality so that I can associate fiskar with multiple fish as opposed to just one. Obviously since it's not correct grammer I can see why you wouldn't accept it, but it's just a thought.
For portuguese speakers sounds like a female name "Eliana"... hehehe
Some sources affirm the plural might be "mooses" as well. This would need more moderation I think so that a wider gamma of answers be accepted.
- 1486
As you can see in the comments on this page, users have widely differing views on whether this would be helpful or not. I've added mooses back as an accepted answer now, but while that will make some users happy, I'm sure others will complain.
I was very doubtful about commenting since I saw it. I tried to check different sources like online dictionaries but just wiktionary says it is dated. Thanks for your feedback!
- 1486
We did approve it on other sentences with moose so it'll hopefully get more consistent now. It's really hard to keep up consistency all over though (and the tools aren't optimal either). Thanks for reporting!
Can't this be just said a "algen", according to this, it's the same thing. Anyone else notice that?
Many English dialects use both moose and sometimes mooses as the plural of moose. Rarer, but some also use meese.
- 2396
Mouse comes from old Germanic, and the plural mice reflects the change in vowel when you pluralize. Moose comes from an Algonquian word which doesn't use the same kind of plural system that we do.
The noun is called "invariant". The plural is still called a plural, even though the word form doesn't change.
