"Pastan är maten."
Translation:The pasta is the food.
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I thought she said "Hastan". So I thought she was saying "the horse is the food".
This sentence structure seems strange to me. In what context would you use "The pasta is the food"?
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You'd use it when you're overly excited about pasta and want to express that it trumps all other foods.
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Well, if there's pasta on the table and whoever is having dinner with you doesn't like pasta, they may sarcastically ask "where's the food?" To which you would respond "the pasta IS the food!" That's the only context i could think of.
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I was thinking that someone had asked the speaker "where (or what) is the food?" And they responded "the pasta is the food."
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My doubt was about the sentence being written in the subject-verb-object order or in the object-verb-subject order.
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"This isn't McDonalds! I thought you said we were having food!" "The pasta IS the food!"
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I'm italian and i don't really understand the english structure here; even if you want to say that pasta is the most awesome food you can't use "the" in front of something you're saying generically, so it would be "pasta is the food", no?
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The idea is probably something like this: I'm hungry but the only thing on the table is that bowl of pasta. I ask: Where's the food?
Someone answers: – The pasta is the food.
Not our best sentence, I grant you that.
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Don't worry; Swedish course so far is the best that i'm following and the fact you answered me so quickly also proves that :) thank you ^^
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> so it would be "pasta is the food"
Unless you were talking about a dish called "The Pasta" or you were talking about a specific restaurants/person's pasta. "Have you been to XYZ Italian Restaurant? The Pasta is the food". It would not be common, but I don't think you'd get weird looks.
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"Hey, what are you doing?" "Translating sentences on Duolingo." "Like what?" "The pasta is the food." "Oh, snap."
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I think the phrase in english is only put that way so we understand how it has to be in swedish. That's what is important in this course, after all.
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Does pasta include noodles and spaghetti like the American usage of the word, or just things like Fusili and Penne, like the British usage?
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For what it's worth we definitely call spaghetti pasta in Britain, and lasagna is a pasta dish, because of the sheets of pasta in it!
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Where in Britain are you from? I've never heard anyone in my life call spaghetti pasta.
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Manchester, and I've never heard of this 'not pasta' controversy in my life! Of course it's pasta, how could it not be? It's another variety of the same stuff!
Not that it's the authoritative source or anything, but:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/pasta
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/spaghetti
And if you go to say Tesco online the spaghetti is in the 'dried pasta' section
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I believe it's a southern thing for pasta to be specific to smaller individual types like penne, fusili, rather than long thin spaghetti or sheets like canneloni or lasagna. Down here I haven't come across anyone or anywhere that thinks it's fine to call spaghetti pasta, because you'd simply call it spaghetti. Same goes for lasagna etc.
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Born and bred Londoner here... Spaghetti is pasta. Or should I say, the spaghetti is the pasta.
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Ok, so I admit Spaghetti is a type of pasta.
Although, if I asked for pasta and got spaghetti I'd be a bit shocked. The fact that the average person probably can't recite all the names of the different types of small pasta but everybody knows what spaghetti is, means that if you want spaghetti you'll probably ask for it and not go with the broad label of pasta, and likewise, if you don't want long stringy spaghetti you'll just ask for pasta.
