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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Det är katternas mat."
69 Comments
1055
There's some big problem on mobile platforms with the apostrophes. We've reported it but who knows if it will ever get fixed.
1055
Correct, it not only hasn't been solved, it's gotten worse. So sorry about that, unfortunately there's nothing more we can do.
Yes, but it is well worth the studying of the tables that you see when you scroll down here: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Possessives
I too thought 'this is', as in English you could say 'this is the cats food' or 'that is the cats food'. depending of the location of the food. Then of course we could clarify by saying 'this here is' or 'that there is', but rarely would we say it that way unless there was two different types of food :P
I think it's fairly natural to say "It is..." in reply to a question, e.g. "What's in the blue bowl?" "It is the cats' food."
It really works with any sort of follow-up phrase, too, e.g. "You mustn't eat that, it's the cats' food!"
It does sound rather strange as a stand-alone sentence, but without any context it probably sounds strange in Swedish too.
1055
There's a technical problem with putting hints on words that contain apostrophes which may be causing this, but there may be something else going on too. I'd actually appreciate having a look at that screenshot. If you could upload it to some image service and post a link here, it would be great.
1055
Thank you! I didn't update this forum, but the bug has been reported to Duo and it exists in other courses too. Actually it's been pretty long since it was reported but it's not the only bug that seems to take forever to get fixed.
In English, or in Swedish?
In Swedish, cat's (in the sense of "belongs to a single cat") would be either katts (indefinite) or kattens (definite), while cats' (in the sense of "belongs to multiple cats") would be either katters (indefinite) or katternas (definite).
In English, it's based entirely on the location of the apostrophe. Cat's is singular, while Cats' is plural.
2266
- the cat's food = the food belongs to one cat
- the cats' food = the food belongs to multiple cats
Since it's the plural katternas in Swedish, it needs to be cats'.
Because "mat" doesn't mean "meal", it only means "food". Most of the time, we wouldn't really NEED to make a distinction between meal and food, but when you think about it, there is a difference. For example, "I've just finished buying the food." - This would suggest that you bought a whole lot of food, maybe for a big event or maybe for the week for your family or something. "I have just finished buying the meal." would mean a single meal, probably only for one person, that would feed them ONCE. The Swedish word for "meal" is "måltid" and would probably (a lot of the time, at least) suggest that there was a bit of conversation and (hopefully) fun happening at the same time. For example "Vi hade en måltid tillsammans." - "We had a meal together." You didn't just share food for the sake of not going hungry, you had food and a conversation together.
835
Why is the possesive apostrophe (') after the s in the english translation if the word cats is a plural, and not the normal noun? It should be cat's .
2266
What do you mean?
- cat's = a single cat has something
- cats' = multiple cats have something
2266
"cat's" would be one cat, but katternas means there are at least two of them.