18 Comments
Got here through a practice session and find myself in the same boat as past commenters. It does seem like a slightly different construction than before. 'Det finns' would also work here, correct?
Det står en korg på bordet = There stands/is a basket on the table
Det finns en korg på bordet = There exists/is a basket on the table
What about something lying on the table, like a book?
Det ligger en bok på bordet (?)
Swedish natives please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll try to answer with how I've been impressed.
I've encountered a sentence with det ligger here (iirc had something to do with ligger-ing on a hylla), so that's definitely possible.
I remember a Swedish native saying in a comment that the difference between det står and det ligger is that the former indicates the thing in question having been placed where it's placed, whereas the latter just mentions the existence of the thing in a specific place. Det finns I think is even less specific than det ligger and only indicates the existence of said thing in a place.
833
står means that the object is perceived to be in a standing position, ligger means it's lying down. finns is more general. So there is a book on the table could be either det ligger en bok på bordet or det finns en bok på bordet (less likely). If the book is standing up, you could say det står en bok på bordet.
I believe in this sense it is talking in a metaphorical sense, where the basket isn't standing as a human or animal would. It is instead just existing in a standing fashion (thus only "There is/Det står". All of the words (ligger, står, på and whatever else there may be in different contexts) directly translate to "is", with the different words only specifying the current state of the object.
(Sorry if I got this wrong, I'm not too fsr in the course, but this is what I believe/think about when i come across these)
The start of the translation is "There is..." does this come from "Det star"?
- 631
Up until now, the course had taught us, "det finns." So I put, "It's a basket on the table." This was marked wrong, even though the meaning is very similar. Perhaps consider including it as an accepted answer. :)
It's so awesome how there are some things in swedish that are verry similar to russian. In russian we also say there stands instead of there is.
- 894
There is no "there is" (or "there stands") in Russian. A Russian would say "basket stands on table" (корзина стоит на столе).
- 833
If we compare with Russian, the best translation of Det står en korg på bordet is На столе стоит корзина, and the best translation of Корзина стоит на столе would be Korgen står på bordet. This is because the indefinite en korg is talking about something not previously mentioned or known to the listener, so it's more typical to have that thing at the end of a Russian sentence because of the information principle (start out with old and known facts, go on to new information).
What is very similar though is that we're very likely to use position verbs such as stand, lie, hang in similar ways in Swedish and Russian, in cases where they'd be more likely to use more general verbs in English.
'På bordet' what actually mean, just on the table, or even near, next to, in the way to the table?
