34 Comments
Thanks a lot Swedish team for not introducing the incorrect but very common "Jag har ingen data" :)!
Nope, it is "en dator - flera datorer" (one computer - several computers). My first comment was about lots of Swedes saying "en data" instead of "en dator". It is so annoying, since "data" in Swedish means data.
Well, to a lot of Swedes, data can mean "computer" as well. It might not be accepted as standard usage, but it's definitely common.
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They are probably talking about Star Trek. That's why the sentence only makes sense in the negation.
Btw, it's really interesting whether dator is somehow connected to data and why Swedes had chosen such a word for a PC)
Dator is probably short for datamaskin and we basically talk about bärbar dator (laptop), stationär dator (desktop) and surfplatta (tablet).
Wiktionary says "Proposed in 1968 by professor Börje Langefors, as a parallel to doktor and traktor, based on data. Earlier Swedish words for computer were kalkylator, matematikmaskin, elektronhjärna and datamaskin, the later often colloquially abbreviated to data."
patoquac, 'tietokone' means 'knowledge machine'.
Finnish words are very literal, for example: Fridge = ice closet, braces = tooth iron, matches = fire sticks, plane = flying machine, umbrella = rain shadow, octopus = ink fish, platypus = water beak animal, bra = breast vest etc.
In Finnish computer is "tietokone" (data machine). I wonder if it's a calque from Swedish or they came to it independently.
Tieto is an IT company, right? The name suddenly makes very much sense :).
Helen, yes Tieto is an IT company, and I work in it, though in Lithuania not in Finland :). It's interesting that few years ago the company was called Tieto Enator, where enator goes for some word in Swedish, don't know really. But for lithuanians that sounds weird, like 'Terminator', thus now only Tieto has left.
It's interesting how different nations accepted into their language the new term 'computer' . For example we in Lithuania adapted the word to 'kompiuteris', but our neighbours latvians have 'dators', and I realized only today that its probably borrowed from Swedish.
Interesting! True, there was a Swedish comoany called Enator. I don't think it means anything though :).
It is en dator- flera datorer (note that the first syllable is stressed in dator while the second syllable is stressed in datorer). If you want to use the faulty en data, I don't have a clue what the plural is. And I don't want to know :).
Hej Helen jag har varit i sverige sedan2017 men jag har inte hört ingen säga...data till computer
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I got the answer wrong with "i don't have any computers". Ok fine, but the suggested correct answer, " I don't have any computer" doesn't really make sense in English to me.
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This sentence is translated as "I have no computer." Would "I don't have a computer" be "Jag har inte dator"?
I said 'I do not have a computer' and it was accepted, though I didn't know why. Is that wrong?
"I have no computer" and "I don't have a computer" mean virtually the same so I don't see a reason why your answer would not be accepted.
Okay. I saw your reply to JimNolt and thought that you were implying it shouldn't have marked it as correct. I misunderstood sorry.
Does anyone else here this as "dotter"? I know there is a difference in the ending sound of the word, but coming from english it just throws me off.
I think you need to listen very carefully...and you will hear the difference between dotter and dator...
In the Spanish from Spain is called ordenador which comes from the verb ordenar, i.e. sort out or tidy up
In French ordinateur. In Chinese is electrical brain that sounds so cool
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In turkish it is "bilgisayar" which is similar naming like finnish did. "Bilgi" means information. "Sayar" means counting. "Information counter". Just some kind of utilitarianist way of giving a name to something just via observing simply from already existing words.
The longer, older Swedish word is datahanterare which literally means "information manager".
