"The sleeping people."

Translation: Det sovande folket.

[davost]

Ah, the Sci-Fi novel of the previous PM. If you want a simple short book to read in Swedish why not this one. It is even freely available online, published by his political enemies :)

[Coreopsis2943]

Author and title, please?

[davost]

http://sovandefolket.se

edit: It is a short story really. Pages 11-40.

[Coreopsis2943]

Thanks!

[deactivated user]

Is it because this phrase refers with 'people' to a certain culture/society or why is personerna not correct?

[Christophe543360]

Yes. It's the same as 'The Swedish people' / 'Det svenska folket'.

[GenevieveLaurin]

If you're speaking of people in general who are, say, afflicted with a sleeping curse, wouldn't "Det sovande människor" work?

[Christophe543360]

No. That would equate to something like "That sleeping humans".
You could say "De sovande människorna".
Translating "People" in to Swedish can be complex, since there's several possibilities:

Folket (also "Folkslag") - Singular - People/Folk/Population/Group of people ("Det svenska folket" - "The Swedish people")

Människorna/Människor - Plural - People/Humans ("Människorna på gatorna" - "The people in the streets", "Människor behöver vatten" - "Humans need water", "Människor är konstiga"* - "Humans/People are strange")

Personer - Plural - People/Persons ("Hur många personer känner du?" - "How many people do you know?")

(*You could also substitute "Folk" for "Människor" in that sentence)

[DonnaSchob]

why do you need "det" if "folket" is already definite?

[PJamesM]

The way I think of it is that adjective needs a separate definite article in order to match the definiteness of the noun, similarly to how you use the -a suffix with plural adjectives to make them match the number of the noun.

What complicates things is that I believe there are circumstances where you don't use a den/det/de for the adjective, which I believe is one of those unfortunate things that you just have to pick up on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps a native Swedish-speaker can clarify.

[Avi187110]

Can we use people with an indefinite article in front of it? "Swedes are a generous people/Svenskar är ett generöst folk"?