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- Topic: Swedish >
- "They like your children."
"They like your children."
Translation:De tycker om dina barn.
34 Comments
Depends on whether you’re addressing one person or several at once – see above.
It said i had a typo in my answer. There should be an option to make it an alternate translation
So I thought I understood the difference between dina and ditt but apparently I don't. Can anyone help me out?
Here you go:
din - used to modify "en" gendered words. "din apelsin" - your apple ... ditt - used to modify "ett" gendered words. "ditt barn" - your child ... dina - used to modify plural words, can be either gender ...
"dina apelsiner" - your oranges "dina barn" - your children
Also, because "barn" is an "ett" gender word, the singular and plural form will be the same: "ett barn", "flera barn". You will usually rely on the ending of an adjective or adjectival pronoun to determine plurality of "ett" gender words.
This can also be translated as "De tycker om ERA barn", however, it is not the accepted answer. Someone needs to really look into these bugs, it can get confusing at times. :(
Does Barn mean singular as well as plural? Is Barnen the definite form of both singular and plural - getting a little confused.
Is there a good resource for looking up forms of nouns in plural/definite/indefinite forms? Thanks!
Yes, barn is neuter, therefore the definite form is -et: ”barnet”. Since it’s neuter and ends with a consonant, it stays the same in the plural: ”barn”. Then if you add a definite article in the plural you get ”barnen”. You can look up the gender in the Dictionary of the Swedish Academy. It will say ”barn s. -et; pl. =” which means ”barn, noun, definite form -et, plural unchanged.”
How can you see the difference (in the English sentence) between you plural and you singular????
One of the drawbacks of English. You have to rely on the sentence in context with other sentences to determine whether "you" and "your" references singular or plural. There are some people that use slang in everyday speech, which is not gramatically correct ... stuff like "Younz" or "Yinz" (up north) or (my personal favorite here in the Southern US) "Y'all" (A contraction of You All) ... but it's not considered proper standard English grammar. Really, I wish we had a pronoun for You plural in proper English grammar.
I still don't understand the use of dina and era with barn. I right din was singular but it's used with the plural barn here??
My notes said that "Ers" could also mean "your". I tried it, but it corrected me to "era" ("Ers" was considered as a typo). When should I use "Ers"? Or does such word exist?
732
Because that would be "your child," not "your children."
Ditt is only used with singular nouns. Since "children" is plural, you need to use dina instead.
Learning a language through English is confusing when there's stuff like "your" being either plural OR singular and also for "they" grrr :)))
This drives me nuts! Put you (pl) or your (pl) when want me to translate into Sweedish. Ahhhh!
