"We eat before we go."
Translation:Vi äter innan vi går.
33 Comments
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Lundgren8 wrote something very helpful about this here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5886416
Haha, I am actually not from Åland (Which you can see when clicking 'Alandislands'), but if I would be, then I would certainly speak Swedish, because everybody must speak Swedish when living on Åland.
I am born in the Netherlands and I've always lived there. I actually haven't got much to do with Åland, I just think that it's a beautiful island + flag and I didn't really care about my name.
Also, that sounds interesting Arnauti, I did not know that Sweden hasn't got any numbers for that.
Åland is a nice place to be... unless you're Finnish. Ålanders are quite discriminating against Finns actually, they are de facto racist against Finnish people, so I just can't bring myself to like Åland...
(Other Finlandswedes aren't like that of course)
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From what it says in Wikipedia, 11.7% of Ålanders don't have Swedish as their native language. But that probably doesn't mean they don't speak Swedish at all. My guess is that that figure would be very small.
The figures in Wikipedia say:
Finnish: 1 399[3], 4,8 %
Swedish: 25 531[3], 88,3 %
Others: 1 986[3], 6,9 %
Interesting fact: in Sweden, we're usually pretty good at statistics. But there aren't any numbers about what native language people have (for reasons of personal integrity), so no one knows how many percent of our population have Swedish as their native language.
http://spraktidningen.se/blogg/sveriges-storsta-sprak
85% could be a likely estimate for Sweden: http://lingvistbloggen.ling.su.se/?p=181
Citation needed. That high number seems very improbable, even a Finn can't own land in Åland if he or she is not fluent in Swedish. Non-native speaker ≠ can not speak it.
Understandable that you don't like aland if that's true. I know a bit of aland but not a lot, so I might start to dislike it as well when I am starting to learn more about it.
You certainly are not obliged to dislike Åland. This is nothing personal to you, you don't have to care about it. I'm just telling my side of it.
Mailboxes with Finnish names on them have been destroyed, the use of the Finnish flag is shunned, speaking Finnish is looked down upon and etc. Signs in Åland are multilingual, but not bilingual. They are either in Swedish, or in Swedish, English and maybe Finnish, but not in Swedish and Finnish, that would be the feared bilingualism. A few years ago Åland also tried to get rid of Finnish place names from the official maps of Åland. The streets of Mariehamn are full of English: Crispy Chicken, Shopping Street. Love Tattoo, because in Åland they do not shun language influences–as long as those influences are not Finnish. The number of Finnish speakers is percentage wise the same as the number of Swedish speakers in mainland Finland, yet Åland doesn't provide services like schools or nurseries in the Finnish language, even though in mainland Finland all services are in also Swedish. In mainland Finland everyone has to learn Swedish in schools and universities and Swedish is an official language in Finland, but in Åland it would be unspeakable to have Finnish as an official language, let alone have it taught in schools or universities, even though Åland belongs to Finland. If a Finn wants to own land or conduct business in Åland, he or she has to have lived in Åland for 5 years and be fluent in Swedish. Åland is demilitarized, so this means Ålanders do not have military duty like mainland Finns do, but some Ålanders volunteer for the Finnish army. In Åland they do not like to see Finnish uniforms, so to avoid difficulties the volunteers change their outfits on the ship to Åland. And the list goes on...
I could try to debunk what you said, which I'll do if you want me to, but your points sound very valid. I just chose my username and profile picture mostly because I liked åland's nature. Also, I didn't really care about my username+profile picture, I basically just wanted to learn some swedish.
I decided to change my name from AlandIslands to Julian K (Which is my name). And my profile picture to a landscape of åland, since I don't want to create the illusion that I like some people that discriminate against others.
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Since there's a discussion about the situation for people with Finnish as their native language in the Åland islands in this thread, I'll post a link to an article about problems that the Swedish-speaking minority may face in the rest of Finland. http://www.expressen.se/geo/det-vaxande-hatet-mot-svensktalande-i-finland/
I remember this because "åker" is similar to "a car" and you åker in a car.
you have to use 'innan' to join a phrase like that. "Vi går" is a subject and an object, so it could be an entire sentence on its own, but you can join it with the conjunction "innan". In contrast, when creating a prepositional phrase like "before tomorrow", you use "före". That phrase can't be it's own standalone sentence.
Okay, "Vi äter innan vi går." is correct and "Vi äter före vi går" is not. However, would it be okay to say "Vi äter före gående" ?
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No, because we don't use gående like that. The English going in 'We eat before going' is a gerund, but we don't have that grammatical category. We normally use infinitives or abstract nouns instead. Or a clause, like here.
gående is a present participle in Swedish and it's used as an adjective. It can also be a nominalized expression as in de gående, this means something like 'those who walk', the word gående in this sense can be used to describe walkers when discussing traffic for instance. It's possible to use gående as a noun for 'walking' as in the act of walking in some cases, but that usage is rare. So gående just doesn't fit in this sentence.
However, there's a compound noun that contains gående, sänggående meaning 'the act of going to bed'. That one can be used with före in this context: Vi äter före sänggåendet 'We eat before going to bed'. It sounds very formal, but it's a correct sentence. innan would also work.
No, you have to use 'innan' to join a phrase like that. "Vi åker" has a subject and an object so it could be an entire sentence on its own, but you can join it to another using the conjunction "innan". In contrast, when creating a prepositional phrase like "before tomorrow", you use "före" because that phrase can not be it's own standalone sentence.
One is a conjunction; the other is a preposition. Details are in the comments.
Why is it går and not åker? I know går is walking and åker is for transportation but why is it one and not the other when it didnt specify how they were "going"?
