"Vi äter olika mat."
Translation:We are eating different food.
December 6, 2014
18 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This discussion is locked.
ion1122
530
- We eat different food = the food that you and I eat is different from the food that others eat.
- We eat different foods = The food that I eat is different from the food that you eat.
Which does the Swedish mean?
ion1122
530
Not so stupid. In older English, "meat" was the general term for food. Cf. "one man's meat is another man's poison."
tontonjf
1593
It is the same for the French word "viande", from Latin "vivenda/vivanda", which originally was a general term for food. It replaced the original term "carn/charn/char/chair" = "flesh"
ion1122
530
I'm no expert, but it seems that 'mat' is being construed as plural. The Swedish 'mat' seems to be like the English 'food' in that you can use it as either a count or a non-count noun. So the Duo translation could also read 'We eat different foods', I would say.
ap2907
234
So is "mat" plural here? Is it one of the very few gender nouns which don't take any ending in the plural, like mil, fot, tum (as measures)?