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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Det är katternas mat."
86 Comments
A cat - en katt - en katts mat
The cat - katten - kattens mat
Some cats - katter - katters mat
The cats - katterna - katternas mat
There's some big problem on mobile platforms with the apostrophes. We've reported it but who knows if it will ever get fixed.
I just solved this on desktop, and I got called out for using an apostrophe, so it might not be restricted to mobile.
Correct, it not only hasn't been solved, it's gotten worse. So sorry about that, unfortunately there's nothing more we can do.
The apostrophes problem is pretty annoying. It's now the very end of 2017. Let's set how long until someone fixes it.
Does anybody else feel all these possessive pronouns are kinda difficult? I get it but I can't respond quickly. Is that normal?
Well, it's normal for me. Just takes regular practice to have it come more intuitively.
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
Yeah, I do too. Pretty sure it is normal, past exercises have been much more easier on my mind. We just haven't got acquainted to the language's nuisances (I meant nuances) yet.
Just to be sure, the plural at the end of the word here is indicating that it is the food belonging to a group of cats, not a single cat?
edit: I meant to say 'apostrophe', not 'plural'. Sorry for the confusion.
Since the end of the swedish word is an -s, remember that that is not the plural.
In "katternas", the plural is the "-er", "-na" is the plural article and the "-s" is the genitive.
No, you wouldn't hear it said, but written it is more correct than "it's the cats food".
I too asked this. But then I realised. This is would be 'det här....' This here is the woman's newspaper.
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.
"Det är katternas mat" = "That's the cats' food"
"Det här är katternas mat"/"Detta är katternas mat" = "This is the cats' food"
"Här" = "Here"
My exercise said cats, not cats' . This is the third with a missing ' after the plural s. I have a screen shot of all 3.
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.
Since it doesn't look like anyone ever followed up on this, here you go:
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.
So I guess this is meant to mean food that belongs to multiple, specific cats. What would it have to say in order to mean just cat food in general?
"Katternas" is plural, i.e. 4 cats' food is katternas mat, one cat's food is katts mat?
and if the plural cats in "cats' food" were indefinite, then it would be "katters mat". Scroll up to JefVanAlse to see the four forms together.
Says i have a typo in the english for writing cats', which is correct... apostrophe to show possession
Depends on how you form the sentence. If you have it as "the cats' food" it's just food but if you put the food at the beginning you would have to say "the food of the cats" because "this is food of the cats" wouldn't be proper english. Of course mat is in the indefinite form though.
why det ? it must be den because katt is an en-word ? or generally what is the difference bet. den and det ?
In this case, det is the same det as in, det regnar (it's raining) and doesn't actually reference anything in particular. If you were using it to reference something though, it would be mat.
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.
- 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.
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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 .
What do you mean?
- cat's = a single cat has something
- cats' = multiple cats have something
"cat's" would be one cat, but katternas means there are at least two of them.
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It is such a shame that the apostrophes do not appear. It seems that in English you do not need them. Having programmed language lessons myself I know it is a problem but it is essential in teaching English.
It is indeed very much a shame. I keep hoping Duolingo HQ will fix the issue, but I'm honestly doubting that it will ever happen.
I understand that there is a problem with the English words and apostrophes, but is there supposed to be one in Swedish words, or do you not use apostrophes in Swedish?
Apostrophes are almost never used in Swedish, and discouraged even when grammatical. They're not used for regular possessives.
I just got marked wrong for "it is the cat's food" which i get, but the "correction" has no apostrophe which is surely just as wrong as what i selected.
The thing is, i could select from It Is The Cat 's Food Bread Bird Strawberry
So there is LITERALLY NO WAY that i could select "cats' food" from the provided words.
Unfortunately, all sentences with the plural apostrophe have similar bugs. It is extremely annoying, and contributors have complained about it for years, but HQ doesn't seem to want to ever fix it.
If you're certain that your answer is correct, please consider leaving an error report or attaching a screenshot, so that we have something to send to the developers.
That said, there are bugs with all sentences that feature plural apostrophes, which could also be the cause of your issue. Since I don't know what you answered, it's hard to tell for sure what went wrong.
There is a bug with the plural apostrophe. Please see the many other comments on this.
Ok, so the correct English is to have an apostrophe, but doing that on mobile is hella annoying and time consuming, if duo can make sense of typos, surely it can make sense of a missing apostrophe
if cats is in plural, isn't it supposed to be many food? why do I have to use the 'it', I don't get it
Food is a mass noun, so it still uses the singular form. Compare if someone asks "What's that?", you could reply "It's food" but not really "They're food" (except in specific contexts).
