"We eat before we go."
Translation:Vi äter innan vi går.
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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.
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
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.
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"?
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" ?
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.
