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I have a question that is a bit nerdy :). I know that somewhat earlier the spellings "moder", "broder", "fader" were normal. Then the "-de-" fell out from speech (like in "staden" vs. "stan"). So, what are the recommendations of the official language regulator (I believe it is called Swedish Academy... sorry if I'm wrong) about this? I know that it persists in Finland (another known example is "arton" vs. "aderton" for eighteen). So: staden eller stan? Fader, moder, broder eller far, mor, bror (or both are acceptable)?
I had a look in SAOL.
For far it says "el. fader", which means that they are equal (el. is short for eller). I haven't checked mor and bror, but I guess that the same holds for them.
For stad it says "-en eller vard. stan", which means that both staden and stan are accepted, but stan is considered colloquial (vardagligt).
Would it be okay to say, "Jag har en bror och syster," like you can in English. Basically, I have a brother and sister. It was marked wrong, but I think the translation is being a little too rigid here.
Maybe it wasn't accepted because they could have different endings? You might have ett barn and en bror. Just a thought.
Good idea, but I don't think so. I see the en/ett distinction as quite a lot like the a/an distinction in English, but with different criteria. In English, you might still say, " I have an aunt and cousin in Leeds", even though you would need an and a respectively.
You may be right though.
I'm nowhere near a solid understanding of Swedish grammar, but I think the en and ett are different genders (en being common and ett being neuter). So objects and things have a specific gender. I'm not sure why, but I speak English, so I can't throw stones at linguistic quirks.
They do refer to different genders, yes. That's what I was referring to when I said "different criteria" apply to a/an than to en/ett. En/ett change depending on gender, a/an change depending on the presence of an initial vowel sound, even if not an initial vowel.
What I meant was that besides the criteria for deciding which indefinite article to use, Swedish indefinite articles function just as their English counterparts - at least as far as I can tell. If that's the case, I don't see a huge problem in ignoring the second indefinite article in a conjunction (see "an aunt and cousin"), even though we might use different articles for each noun involved. That being said, Lundgren8 said it sounded unusual to them, so while it may be grammatically permissible, like in English, it's probably still a good idea to use a second article, just to sound natural.
in a different part of this lesson, brother was translated as "broder", so "bror" and "broder" mean brother, while "bröder" means brothers?
Yes. Broder is uncommon and largely archaic, but means the same as bror
Is there any kind of advice you could give me about when "och" is being pronounced as "okk" or when it's being pronounced as "o"? I would have pronounced it as "okk" here, seeing that it's followed by "en", which begins with a vowel sound.
It's most always just o, unless you emphasize it. Then it's pronounced ock. It doesn't have to do with the following sound, as Swedish doesn't have the liaison mechanics that French is so fond of.
Thank you very much. I've also heard some people pronouncing "och" as "okke" while pausing when speaking. Can you confirm this?
Yes and no. Your ears don't lie, but it's two words: "och, eh...", just like an English speaker might pause with "and, uh..." sometimes.
This is more of a general question: The TTS sounds like the och is pronounced as an 'o' when in the sentence, like the ch seems to disappear... Is that how it's meant to be pronounced or are my ears deceiving me?
