"I live on an avenue."
Translation:Jag bor vid en allé.
28 Comments
Yes, I agree. But in English, you would live ON the avenue. I was just wondering why it was vid, though. I thought vid meant that it was by, or alongside?
888
I think there's a difference here because the Swedish word allé refers very clearly to the lines of trees. In English, it's possible to have an avenue which is not lined with trees, but in Swedish, en allé is actually a line of trees, most often a double line of trees.
Hi, I'm just wondering if there is a reason you used 'allé' here rather than 'aveny' if your English translation says avenue? If the allé is referring clearly to the lines of trees as you say (which I had no idea this was a thing, that it is necessary for an avenue to be lined with trees?), I don't quite get why you would translate it into avenue. That is rather a bit misleading.
- 888
It's just that English doesn't seem to have a (widely used) word for allé, but we use it a lot in Swedish, and we wanted to include some typical Swedish words. aveny is also an accepted translation here.
One of the definitions (in English) of Avenue is a line of trees. That use has been largely done away with in favor of using avenue as synonym for street or road, but the older use is still technically correct.
In landscaping terms used by English speakers, an allee (with an accent grave) is indeed a walkway lined with trees.
- 1174
I guess that is exactly that... Actually, no one lives "on" the street (except homeless people), mostly of us live in a house that is at the side of a street or an alley. I guess that's the reason why Swedish people specified to live "vid" a street and no "på" the street.
- 888
No, it's like I said above – allé refers to a line of trees, so you cannot live on it. You can perfectly well live på en gata in Swedish, also på en aveny. Just not with allé.
By the way, I think the term for a tree-lined street is boulevard. That's true in French at least.
Still doesn't make sense to me, wouldn't "Jag bor vid en allé" then be "I live by an avenue" which to me sounds more like if the adjoining road was an avenue? For example if you were to say "I live by the shops" - "Jag bor vid affärerna" - I wouldn't expect you to be opposite the shops, nor for it to even be on your road.
- 888
I think the preposition just follows from the noun. Google gives 2 hits for live by an avenue and 74,200 for live on an avenue so the latter is clearly more common.
PS, I don't think I live by an avenue is wrong, and we do still accept that, it's just that it seems to be used less frequently than on.
Oh, ok! I would call this a "tree-lined walkway." An "avenue" is definitely a wide street for cars (with trees like in the picture).
I am guessing "alle" can be like this picture, or a street for cars with trees on each side. I mean, it can mean either a walkway lined with trees, or a street lined with trees. Am I right?
And does the word "aveny" translate to "avenue"? In other words, an "aveny" has cars driving on it, and you would not call this a picture of an aveny, right?
Or is "alle" just the line of trees, nothing to do with the walkway or a street???
This is kind of an odd question, but the "é" is not actually part of the Swedish Keyboard mode on my iPhone
How frequently is it used in Swedish, and is the frequency or infrequency of it's usage the likely reason for it not being mentioned/used in some other places online/in my phone?
I realize this is a bit outside of the scope of DuoLingo itself, so my apologies, but I couldn't find any other information regarding this question
It's commonly used only for a handful of loanwords, mainly from French, like allé, café, armé etc. It shows the word is stressed on the long E of the last syllable.
From what I know of mobile phone keyboards, often tapping and holding a button will open a new menu of accents to a letter. Perhaps that'll work for you?
Thanks! And it wasn't so much a problem with getting it to work on my phone (as you said, holding the key allows you to use the character), I just really wanted to understand the character's role in the language. Its absence from the phone was just an indication to me that it was in some way peculiar or unique compared to the other characters.
How are people typing the é using the swedish keyboard setting on a PC? It's driving me crazy and I can't find an easy solution online. All of those solutions are to type in some code and change settings, which is too much for me.
On a Swedish keyboard, you press first the ´ and then the E, which gains the accent since the accent was followed by a vowel.
Would another translation for allé be boulevard or is the term reserved for smaller roads?
- 888
Size doesn't matter, but there should be lines of trees on preferably both sides. But we have the word boulevard in Swedish too, so I guess we'd usually just call 'a boulevard' en boulevard.
So, I always thought a BOULEVARD had to have a median down the middle with grass and possibly trees, flowers, etc. And I learned here on DuoLingo that an AVENUE has trees along the sides.
It turns out the only requirement for a boulevard or an avenue is that they are wide streets going through the middle of town. But the other things are implied or usually there.
Avenue = a broad road in a town or city, typically having trees at regular intervals along its sides.
Boulevard = a very wide street that is lined with trees. Many boulevards have a median strip of grass and sometimes trees.
