43 Comments
How does "Jag har ingen häst" compare to "Jag har inte en häst?"
The translation Duo gave me was "I do not have a horse"... would that be more like "Jag har inte en häst"? And "Jag har ingen häst" would be more like "I do not have any horses"?
Tack!! :)
Yes, I was also wondering if "I don't have any horse" should be correct here.
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I think the thread below this goes a bit too far (not your fault of course, EduZamora1). After all, the recommended answer is I have no horse, we're not trying to make anyone say I don't have any horse, we just accept it as an answer. But felt I should point out here that ingen häst can NOT mean 'no horse meat' in Swedish. That would have to be inget hästkött.
My understanding is that "ingen" is "no" for an en-word, whereas inte is "not". I think Duolingo might be allowing both because "I have no horse" and "I do not have a horse" mean the same thing. But I note that in earlier lessons, it didn't allow us to answer similarly how it's allowing us to here, i.e. "i have no/i do not have" because of the different meanings of the individual words, i guess. Does that make sense?
I thought ingen/inget/inga were all used to negate nouns, whereas inte is used to negate verbs.
Ahh that makes sense, which makes inget = no for ett words. Tack så mycket! :)
If you ever decide to dabble around in German or Dutch, they have something similar as well. In German it's "kein" and in Dutch it's "geen".
Basically, the way you want to translate these is as 'no' or as 'not a' because the words for English 'not' (nicht/niet) can be used in many different ways that can change the meaning of the sentence slightly, but that would be difficult for an English speaker to distinguish. Unfortunately, it has been quite some time since I've done German or Dutch on here and cannot produce proper examples to demonstrate this to you.
I would think the former would imply something like, sometimes I have horses but right now I don't, while the latter means I don't ever really have horses.
I'm not sure if this question has been replied somewhere else by a native Swedish moderator, but here it is: What is the exact difference between inte and ingen?
The same as in "I don't have a horse" and "I have no horse". Negating the verb or the noun.
Yes! Although Swedish can use the construction "inte en" where "niet een" in Dutch would become geen.
How do you say "I do not have any horses ? " because that's what I thought this sentence meant
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Yup. (It's even closer to that since you can also say Jag har inte några hästar for 'I don't have any horses')
so this is an example from the 'tips and notes' in which inte negates the noun and inga etc. negate the verb?
I was reading all of these comments and just got confused- i don't understand where the word 'any' translated out of the swedish sentence... can you please explain that some more?
The "any" is the "inga", though it's more akin to "not any". You wouldn't use "inga" for "do you have any horses?", for example.
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"inte" negates the verb and "ingen/inget/inga" negates the noun; "not" versus "no" = "not any".
”Det där” would be ”that” in that context. ”Att” is a conjunction as in ”I think that he’s coming”.
Ahh yes, I had that realization a little later in the day. I just forgot where I had put the comment. Tack så mycket :)
Is 'jag har ingen häst ' another equivalent of 'jag har inte någon häst ' ? ingen- no, någon- any, inte någon -no (acc. to google translate)
I don't think that would be a completely unheard-of sentence, depending on what tone you say it in, but I can say that it sounds more colloquial than "Jag har ingen häst" to me.
That's the plural form.
Edit: Not really a definite, thanks to AmbassadorTigger for pointing that out below.
Minor nitpick, but does it really make sense to talk about a definite form of ingen?
No, you're right. It doesn't really, especially since it's a pronoun. Thanks, I'll edit that out.
No, you need an article to attach to the "häst", at least if it's unconjugated.
True as hell and Im very sad about not having a horse but I guess if everything works out in the end, then I'll have a horse.
In English, this is sorta unnatural. "I do not have a horse" is how I'd say that, but do the swedes have a way to say that?
Well I mean, they would probably say this sentence. I'm a native Swede and "I do not have a horse" was my first instinctual translation to this sentence. But if you mean you want a literal translation that would be "Jag har inte en häst".
Is this natural in Swedish? Most English speakers might say "I have no horses" following this sentence structure.
Both this and "Jag har inga hästar" ("I have no horses") sound natural in Swedish. I think it would mostly depend on context which would be more appropriate.
I put "I haven't got a horse", and it was corrected to "I haven't got any horse" - that correction is NOT normal English!
