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- Topic: Swedish >
- "A girl eats a sandwich."
"A girl eats a sandwich."
Translation:En flicka äter en smörgås.
35 Comments
Yup! The ancestry of smorgasbord goes directly back to Swedish (guess you'd even call it a loan word?). The Swedish "smörgås" meaning sandwich, and the Swedish "bord" meaning table become combined to form the English word smorgasbord which generally means a large spread of food (typically on a wide table unsurprisingly).
115
Both words mean one, but you can't use them randomly with nouns. You'll need to learn if it's en or ett for each noun.
115
... or (most likely depending on accent) å would be like the 'o' in "horse".
Using my own accent in Swedish and English the word "Smörgås" could almost be transcribed as "s-m-(h)er-gorse", as long as you stick to a Brittish accent where the 'r's in "her" and "gorse" don't make too much sound. Almost...
(Both vowels are long in "Smörgås" where I live, but there are variations between different parts of Sweden - some use short ö and lång å, some use lång ö and short å, and some use short versions for both.)
115
Quite possible, yes. I don't really know, as I only hear that version when watching TV. My mother's relatives (southeast) use long-short and my father's relatives (living on some of the islands outside Gothenburg) use short-long.
There are some indicators, but mostly a case of memorisation. I've written a little more about it e.g. here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/26420394
Be sure to check out the link in that post as well.