- Forum >
- Topic: Swedish >
- "Finns det fortfarande viking…
"Finns det fortfarande vikingar i Sverige?"
Translation:Are there still Vikings in Sweden?
27 Comments
It's true... I can prove it; story: my family lived in Sweden for a year, when I was young. No trouble. We got on the ferry. We arrived in Denmark. We were not in Denmark three hours before my mum was punched in the face by a Viking (well, he had a Metallica T-shirt on and was about 6'6", drunk, and shouting upwards). The police shrugged their shoulders, which I supposed to mean "... bah, happens all the time."
39
Yes, I been learning Danish for many years now. It is not too hard to pick up Swedish because so much vocabulary and grammar is the same. What's most difficult is remembering the words that are almost the same in both languages but spelled with a few different letters. I will understand them if I hear or see them but remembering the spelling is a challenge. I'm almost done with the Swedish tree and now when I watch Swedish TV I understand a lot more. I may try a novel when I have time.
is that a good way to learn better? listen or read the language you're learning?
I learned the basics of Danish before going on a trip to Denmark and it honestly helped me learn Swedish SOOO much (esp. after I got over mixing up Danish and Swedish words). Also my knowledge of French has really helped me understand Swedish bc a lot of words are very similar (prob due to the Vikings interactions with the French). Ex: paraply -> parapluie
I'm no expert but I would guess that the French connection is more recent than the Vikings. Swedish high society was fascinated with French (the language and the culture) for a long time. Descartes was invited to Sweden in the 17th century and actually ended up dying there.
- 127
Is there a more literal translation of fortfarande?
Like how garderob would literally be something like "keep-robes", but it really means closet
- 1456
att fortfara is an old verb that means to continue (nowadays we say fortsätta instead). att fara means to travel but can sometimes have a much more general meaning in composite words, compare how go is sometimes used in a lot of senses in English; fort comes from an old word with the meaning forward, same as in English go forth; so fortfarande is composed like forth-going, except it has a different meaning.
In case you're still interessted: I see you're learning German as well: Fortwärhend is a pretty accurate translation fo fortarande. It comes from fort and währen. Währen can be translated as "last" or "go on". If you want to say "please continue" in German, you'd say "fahr fort".
Thank you , this is actually really helpful (as a native German speaker).
I see, in the "fara" part, a latin contamination with the verb "fero"="carry", in a sort of carry-forward.
Hehe, no. There are only some 2000 speakers or so in all. I don't think it'll ever feature on Duolingo. Would have been lovely, though!
Älvdalska is called Elfdalian in English: it's a North Germanic language spoken in the north-west parts of the county Dalarna, namely Älvdalen municipality. It's obviously close to Swedish, but not enough to make the languages mutually intelligible.
