18 Comments
Indeed... Swedish is brilliant that way! It has the most clear, short familial words in all the languages that I know... Smart!
841
Probably something else that went wrong. When this kind of thing happens, it's best to report it via the Report a problem button. If you do post in the forum, always write the whole sentence you put.
Faster really interests me. I like the obvious Father's Sister compound, but beyond that it sounds like the English word "foster." Foster parents, foster home, etc. Maybe this word originated from earlier languages where it was custom to give the children to the father's sister in case the parents couldn't tale care of them. I'm going to look into this.
Nope, completely unrelated. "Faster" is derived from "father's sister", whereas English "foster" comes from Old English fōstor (food, sustenence). There's a Swedish cognate of "foster" spelled the same way meaning "fetus" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foster#Etymology
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Yes, but this is an early lesson teaching the fundamental meanings of vocabulary like this.
- 88
I wrote: 'my paternal aunt is the sister of my dad'. In theory it should be accepted... was it marked incorrect because I didn't use 'my dad's sister', or because 'paternal aunt' is not one of the accepted meanings?
- 27
Is far a synonym for pappa or is it just a leftover from an older languages? German has cognate words for both, but Vater (the te got lost in Swedish like in broder -> bror) is more formal than Papa. If both can be used is there a similar difference in Swedish?
How would one say, "I have many aunts," including both sides of the family? Is there another word? Or would one have to say, "mostrar och fastrar"?
