37 Comments
Swedes are very descriptive. You don't have a coffee, you drink a coffee. You don't want a dog, you want to have a dog. They would never say the store is next to the bank, they would say the store lies next to the bank. Things in a room either hang, lay, or stand. If they were going to say "the apple is in the refrigerator" they'd use "finns" instead of är. From what I can deduce, "är" is used more to describe something. The apple is big= Äpplet är stort / I am a girl=Jag är en flicka
Anyone who's Swedish feel free to clarify! :)
Thank you! (And now that I have gotten to go further in my tree, I have come to realize this.)
657
Interesting.
Dutch is allow like this, except that objects can also sit. A shop, for example, would sit next to the bank, not lie. An apple would also sit in the fridge.
Hej.i am not good in swedish but if you try with another word which uses ETT like barn you will find out the point
I'm afraid there is little rule to it. Ligger is used to mean is situated. For most apparent purposes, it's not wrong to say är instead, but it might not be how us Swedes would say it.
the apple lies beneath the bear - personal preference, but I really prefer the word beneath to underneath. Not a native speaker of Engelska so there might be a difference in those I am not aware of...
- 240
As a native speaker, I can't think of any sentence where swapping "beneath" for "underneath" would change the meaning. "Beneath" is sometimes used metaphorically or in idioms that would sound odd with "underneath", but they're not the sort of phrases that almost anyone is saying day-to-day. I'd say just use whichever you prefer.
Except, perhaps, metaphorically. You would say "that's beneath contempt", but saying "that's underneath contempt" would raise a few eyebrows! Funny thing, language...difficult to get on top of.
- 739
My answer was ''the apple is placed under the bear'' and I think it is ok?
that implies somebody actually put the apple there. this is just saying the apple is located there. we don't know how it got there.
I answered with "The apple lays under the bear" and it was wrong. Any explanation why?
"Lay" is something you do to something else--I lay the sheet on the bed, or maybe I lay the paper under the bear, if I'm very brave and have some sort of bear forklift :)
It is related to English "lies" and you can pretty much translate it to lies: The apple lies under the bear.
Is this similar to Russian where things "lie" (lezhat') or "stand" (stoyat') depending on the way they are situated?
- 895
Yes, of course it varies a bit from case to case but in general it works pretty much like in Russian.
When I put my cursor over the word ligger, it says it means "is situated or is located". Then I put that in the answer and they say "lying" is the correct answer ...but that wasn't one of the definition it gave. Am I doing this wrong? How else are we do know a new words definition if not to put the cursor over it?
- 895
I can see that too. If I hover the word on this page, I get three hints: is, is located and is situated. But inside the incubator, I can see all of the hints for the word, and lies and is lying are both among them. Words usually have many hints. Somehow the machine picks out some of them for display, and it doesn't always make the best choice. We as course contributors can add or remove hints, but that doesn't help in this case since we can't influence which ones are going to be displayed. So unfortunately there's nothing we can do about it.
Well, thanks for explaining. Seems like a pretty significant glitch, though. Giving a definition and marking it incorrect on the answer. But as you say - there is nothing we can do about it. Thanks for responding.
Hej you are right. It means that we are learning more by repeating the examinations than other ways
My hints show "ligger" to be translated as "is," and then it was counted wrong when I used "is" instead of "lies."
