"Prästen bad oss att be."

Translation: The priest asked us to pray.

[HelenCarlsson]

Note that "ask" and "pray" both are translated to "be".

[jayagmon]

Actually, it's used to be the same way in English. Like "pray tell" or "pray sit down" = "I ask you to tell" etc. It's hardly used any more, but Jane Austen and her conteporaries use it all the time. At some point or another "please" took over.

[heimaey]

Is this more of a church way to say ask? It sounds similar to the English "bid us pray" - which is essentially the same thing but sounds a bit archaic.

[HelenCarlsson]

No, this is more of a Duolingo "be" training sentence :). The priest says "Låt oss be" (or the old version "låtom oss bedja"), which means let us pray.

[heimaey]

Looked it up. The English bid is cognate with the Swedish bad coming from the Old Norse - bithja. We just don't use it as much in English anymore. Tack!

[toOliya]

'Bid farewell' is another good example. But yes, not used very often...

[Sninguistics]

We do use bid – in auctions as well as a part of other words (like forbid)!

[Jan-Olav]

Bid would be 'bjuda' and forbid 'förbjuda'.

[Beanybadger]

I typed 'the priest bade us pray' and it was marked correct. It made me happy :)

[deactivated user]

He bade her farewell whilst flowery is still perfectly understandable. ;)

You're right in that it isn't used as often anymore.

[samulili]

Does that mean that the preast in question could also have been praying that we ask for stuff in stead of stealing it so that we do not commit a sin?

[HelenCarlsson]

Ha ha, since it is "prästen bad oss" it can't be a prayer really, but it could be "the priest asked us to ask".

For pray, it is either "be" or "be till gud", so if we were gods it would be "prästen bad till oss..."

[NathanHill16]

Duo doesn't accept "The priest bade us pray", and it probably shouldn't, but for some reason a lot of us English-speakers seem to like old-fashioned language in church, and it's one of the few places that you'll see bade or bidden still used. (See also "my cup runneth over", "thine is the glory", "forgive us our trespasses" and so on). Maybe it's the influence of the King James Bible being the dominant translation for a long time after language had shifted elsewhere.

Evidence that "bade us pray" is still in use, but probably shouldn't be accepted here, is that it returns hundreds of thousands of results about religious topics, but Google also says "Did you mean Bidet spray?".

[Arnauti]

I'll give you a lingot or two for the Bidet spray, it gave me a laugh :D

[devalanteriel]

Excellent summary! I was just reviewing this sentence and I agree completely.

Much later edit: There are so many who get this sentence wrong for using "bade" that I have now come to accept it. There's no point in enforcing something that gives people unnecessarily.

[ion1122]

Bra! Have a Lingot ... .

[freeboprich]

It's also worth noting that until not too long ago, "bade" was used regularly in English as a form of "requested."

[ion1122]

Yes, and pronounced with a short a as in English 'bad'!

[Siipisimppu]

Hey here's that 'for' thing again.

In "vill du att jag ska mäta dig" I answered "do you want for me to measure you", and it was not accepted, but after I asked about it, my answer was added to the correct answers.

Here I answered again: "The priest asked for us to pray", and it was not accepted, because I added the word 'for'. If it was accepted in the sentence I mentioned earlier, I think it should be accepted here too.

[OsoGegenHest]

It's dialectal, but should probably be added so that people stop bidding it be added.