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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Min hund dricker vatten."
21 Comments
what's the difference between Mitt and Min? They are both translated to my/mine
I believe min is for 'en' words and mitt is for 'ett' words but I could be wrong.
You are correct. Also, Mina is the plural possessive of Jag. I suggest you look at the web version of Duolingo and not the app so that you can look at the notes; at least for the first lesson of each new skill. :)
Is there an easier way of distinguishing between -ett and -en words because I am constantly getting these wrong because I don't know the difference. At the moment I am pretty much guessing??
There is a great list of tendencies here (https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6329293) but apart from that I'm afraid you'll just have to learn each by heart.
The r is still there, only less pronounced than it would be at the end of a sentence or as a stand-alone word.
Swedish doesn't have a continuous tense, so there's no difference between "is drinking" and "drinks" - they're both dricker. You can translate to either one throughout the course, and if you ever need to distinguish between them in a real-life situation, you can derive it contextually.
Swedish has in fact a special way to express approximately same meaning as "I am drinking", namely "Jag håller på att dricka". But as Devalanteriel says, the natural expression for both "I drink" and "I am drinking" is to simply say "jag dricker".
Also jag sitter/står/ligger och dricker. Both constructions appear (much) later in the tree. :)
I am struggling with Min versus Mitt and Er versus Ert. I understand the words you use for plural possession, but these are confusing to me.
- min, er are for singular en-words
- mitt, ert are for singular ett-words
Devalanteriel explained already the difference between (min/mitt and Er/Ert), but here yet some examples:
my dog = min hund (because "a dog" = en hund)
my house = mitt hus (because "a house" = ett hus)
your (one person's) dog = din hund
your (many persons') dog = er hund (this is also the polite form when addressing one or many persons: Er hund)
your (one person's) house = ditt hus
your (many persons') house = ert hus (this is also the polite form when addressing one or many persons: Ert hus)
our dog = vår hund; our house = vårt hus
The difference between en and ett words is not shown for the third person:
his dog = hans hund
his house = hans hus
her dog = hennes hund; her house = hennes hus
their dog = deras hund
their house = deras hus
Note that we don't teach ni/er as polite forms since this is largely a common myth.
How do I say "My dog drinks the water" ? (I got this wrong because I added the word "the")
Min hund dricker vatten (My dog drinks water). The water is vattnet.
