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- "Mitt kaffe"
81 Comments
I understand 'min' is for 'en'-words and 'mitt' is for ett words. My understanding was 'kaffe' is an 'en'-word if you mean you want a cup of coffee, but if you want to refer to a certain kind of coffee it would be handled as an 'ett' word. Does 'mitt kaffe' then mean the person is saying something along the lines of 'my [brand / type of ] coffee?
There are some noun endings you could look for in the chapter on nouns which give clues to gender. http://www.readersstuffz.com/downloads/ebooks/Language%20Books/Swedish/Swedish%20-%20Essential%20Grammar.pdf
1454
Kaffe is in general an ett word, but you can say en kaffe when you speak about your cup of coffee or something like that. So min kaffe is also correct, but there's a difference in meaning.
En kaffe sounds just about acceptable to me if used for ordering. I'd personally always specify the unit, i.e. "En kopp kaffe, tack". Of course I'd never order "ett kaffe, tack" either.
Min kaffe sounds abominable though. "Jag hämtar min kaffe" does not sound natural at all to me. I would always refer to it as "mitt kaffe". Is this a regional thing I've somehow managed to avoid for 34 years?
1454
It's definitely used less with coffee than with beer, but it doesn't sound strange to me – I'd usually order en kaffe. My feeling is that I hear it more often in restaurants and cafés so it could be business jargon, but I'm not sure.
1454
We only tend to use it with words commonly spoken about in 'servings', like en öl 'a beer' and as here, with coffee.
1454
Spelling doesn't always make sense, but here it actually does, since the i sound in mitt is short, the word is pronounced as mitt, not as mit.
A better question would be why min is not written minn, since that is how it is pronounced, but for that one I don't have a good answer. It's just down to convention, I think.
1454
mitt for ett words and min for en words.
Kaffe can be either an ett word – when you speak about coffee in general – and an en word – when what you really mean is 'a cup of coffee'.
A bisarre little quick of Swedish: coffee is an uncountable mass noun that takes -t, so the coffee is "kaffet" and my coffee is "mitt kaffe". BUT you CAN hear people order "en kaffe" in a café because sometimes with t-ending mass nouns in Swedish, if you want to talking about one specific unit of that thing, it switches genders. Another example is mejl, which is absolutely a t-word. The e-mail is "mejlet". But you sometimes hear people asking for each other's e-mail addresses my saying "Kan jag få din mejl."
Swedish Radio's "Språket" program did an interesting segment on this, but no need to worry about it at this stage. Focus on kaffe being a t-word. Kaffet. Mitt kaffe. :-)
685
Min is for en nouns and mitt is for ett nouns. The Swedish word for coffee is kaffe and that is an en noun so why was min wrong and Duolingo wants mitt.