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- "Hela månaden?"
18 Comments
In the pronominal sense of "the entire/whole" or "all of", only hela is used, without an article, and followed by a definite form. Same with other similar words, such as halva 'half of' or båda 'both of'. (Note the sense of measuring/specifying with these words)
If you use it with an article you'll get the other sense of the word, 'whole' as in 'unbroken'.
Hela huset = The entire house
Det hela huset = The unbroken house
1048
I can't answer that right away, but I'll give you a question in return to think about in the meanwhile: why do you say "all month" in English and not "the all month"?
- 1048
Exactly – just like in Swedish, it varies with the word. Blehg explains it pretty well in his comment above. There's a group of adjectives that behave this way. What they have in common is that they are all words that sort of make the word definite all by themselves. For instance if I say next week, we both know which week I'm talking about, so we don't need anything more to make it definite. So we just say nästa vecka. Adjectives in this group are adjectives that refer to order (like nästa, also sista 'last', förra 'last/previous', första 'first', andra second etc). They tend to be a little irregular in what they prefer though: we say nästa vecka 'next week' but förra veckan 'last week'.
Pronouns such as samma 'same' (samma bok 'the same book') and all possessive pronouns (min bok, 'my book') also have this 'definite enough' effect.
- 111
What purpose is served by placing an article before these adjectives? I've seen it done on titles for things, most notably, and the reason I thought of this, in the song "Den sista sången" from Kent. Does it serve a meaning or is it just the way titles like that are written?
No it appears to be a thing within Swedish to put an article in front of it as well, aside from the noun already being definite. I have no idea why and to me it looks like "the last the song" which is weird XD
- 2259
Re-recording
The voice is not quite perfect on this sentence, as of August 11th, 2017, so I've taken the liberty of re-recording it.
The stress should be on hela MÅnaden, rather than on HEla månaDEN like the voice does. Further, since it's a question, the pitch should change.
Please find a correct recording on http://duolingo.vydea.io/bdc033ccb543456b865914c21d199f29.mp3, which contains first a recording of the question version, followed by a recording of the statement version.
For more info on re-recordings, please check the info thread: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/23723515
Thanks for listening. Ha en bra dag! :)
If the noun is definite, the adjective takes the ending -a in all cases, no matter gender or number.
- 1048
You need the the because it says hela månadEN – it's definite in Swedish so it should be in English too.
Oh right, yes. I was being stupid, sorry. I think it confused me because you can't put the in front of all.
In speech would tone/infliction be the way to tell if this is a question or a statement?
- 2259
Yes, definitely. I've just uploaded a sound file containing both options; please have a look above.
