"En anka, flera ankor"

Translation:A duck, several ducks

November 30, 2014

22 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/SoggyScroll

Does Swedish combine vowels when speaking? I hear "En anka, fler-ankor" in the TTS.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

Yes and no. They are not contracted in the way that e.g. Spanish combines "de" + "el" to "del", but as with all languages, as long as you don't speak really slowly, your words will tend to kind of merge occasionally.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/SoggyScroll

Yeah, I understand that. I just meant spoken Swedish. Thanks.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

I thought so, just wanted to be clear.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/bigswedeej

Plurals can be -er, -ar, here is -or. What are the rules?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/JoXy997

just read Tips and notes in lesson Plurals . it helped me


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/TattooedMuggle

They don't have those in the app! sob I seriously start every new section blind


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/melodytwz

Just to be sure, can "flera" mean "some" in additional to "several"?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Zmrzlina

Yes and no, but mostly no. At its core, "flera" means "two or more". It's used throughout the course for marking the plural form of a word. There might be cases where English will want "some" but Swedish will want "flera" for some idiomatic reason, but as a general rule it's a bad idea to translate it thusly.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/SariahLily

I like this sentence! I need a lot more with this format for all the nouns, to get them in my head right.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Vima551863

is it wrong if we translate flera to some? one duck, several ducks?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

Yes, "some" would be nĂ¥gra.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Farkhat.kz

I wrote "anJor" instead "anKor" and Duo accepted it


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/votears

TTS sounds very different on the second syllable, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anka.

And by the way, what's its relationship with these words: anas (Latin), Ente (German) ?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Zmrzlina

I'm not sure I agree, both TTS and wiktionary sounds right to me.

My etymology dictionary says yes to your second question though! Anka stemming from andkona, which comes from and ("duck") and kona (obsolete word for woman), anka thus sharing common roots with anas and ente.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/nazaracanreapit

Swedish is a Germanic language, so it's similar to German for that reason. Latin, probably a coincidence, Swedish is far from related to any of the romance languages.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

It's not a coincidence. Like Zrmzlina wrote, the Latin word is related as well.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Edvin40261

Swedish is kind of related to latin in The sence that The germanic languages took many words from latin


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MonsieurCal

Is the use of 'en' and 'ett' for 'a' and 'an' interchangable for the use of 'one'?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Arnauti

Yes. The choice between en/ett depends on the gender of the word, and we don't differentiate between 'a/an' and 'one', so only context will tell you which one is meant. (In the course, we try to always accept both).

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