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- "Vad skrattar du åt?"
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AFAIK In English, you use "laugh at someone" and "laugh about something". Since the question starts with "What" and not "Whom", using "about" would be the correct translation.
I disagree. "What are you laughing at?" sounds the most natural to my ear, especially in a situation where someone is offended that someone is laughing, such as if they expect that they're being laughed at
Why are you laughing? makes most sense. I avoid ending English sentences with prepositions, because I'm a rule follower.
Does svenska have such a rule, even if it's disregarded, I wonder.
There is actually no rule about ending English sentences with a preposition. At one time, an (unfortunately) influential writer coughJohnDrydencough felt that English should emulate Latin as closely as possible, despite the fact that, you know, it is a Germanic language with Romance loan words. Dryden was such a successful author, that many people sought to emulate him, despite the fact that his rule was artificial and arbitrary. We are still dealing with the nonsense of him and his ilk nigh on four hundred years later.
That does not really make any sense in English. No one ever says laughing for
it makes perfect sense actually, but it would be a slightly different meaning than what are you laughing at. like 'what are you doing that for?'
hears somebody laughing
What are you laughing for? Makes perfect sense actually.
Very common in American English. It means "Why are you laughing?"
If you are in a situation that is serious, and someone started inappropriately laughing, you would say "What are you laughing for?"
There are also other uses, but this is one of the most common.
The fact of a huge amount of dialects existence in English makes it annoying to learn
Every time I visit Sweden I meet people who apologize for their English skills, even though many of them speak very good English. In fact, some speak better English than some Americans do - Ha!
Are you referring to regional dialects or racial dialects ???? We have more than 350,000,000 people in the U.S., so there are people who speak English as a first language (some speak it well, while others not so much) and foreign born who speak broken English.
I have no idea what a racial dialect might be. And I am from California. Race doesn't even exist.
I'll just voice that I don't believe dialects exist in the U.S. I don't think there are dialects of English. There are various pidgins and accents and regional idioms, but it is all the same language.
Please look at the first definition from merriam webster. Also look at the definition of pidgin - which is a çanguage used between two sets of people speaking unintelligible languages that is not spoken as a native tongue by either. Before you pontificate you might want to actually look up the definitions of the words you're using.
Det skulle vara trevligt om Pewds gjorde en "Lär dig svenska med PewDiePie" serie på YouTube. :-) En liten försmak här: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqjm-Kqe_Q
So they can put prepositions at the end of a sentence in Swedish, too?
Is it correct in both formal and informal swedish or it works just the same as un english?
1449
It's correct in formal Swedish too and we don't have this whole discourse about how it's supposedly wrong that you do in English.
(It still varies what you can do with which words, of course, you still cannot put just any preposition at the end of just any sentence).
It isn't really wrong, even in formal English, and never really was until a bunch of scholars decided to write an English grammar based on Latin. It's why we're saddled with things like "must use the nominative case (which we don't really have) after a linking verb such as is or feels. Germanic languages in general, which English is, allow prepositions at the end of a sentence.
Ending prepositions are really useful, I miss them in my Russian. We use them only for humor purposes when we need to indicate that something is translated wrong (x
Yet it marks my English translation wrong if i refuse to end with a proposition. It really should accept, "At what are you laughing?" as acceptable.
It might be grammatically correct, but no one talks that way. I'm starting to think ending sentences with prepositions is so common in the Midwest because of the Swedish immigrants.
Ending in a prepositions is common normal English since many hundreds of years, actually.
Many people talk that way, actually. It's just that the incorrect usage of prepositions at the end of sentences has become colloquial across the country.
Would "Vad skrattar du om?" make sense, to mean 'laughing about' rather than 'laughing at'?
Yes, @HPFoley, yours is a perfectly acceptable translation, and a form that is still widely used by "highly educated" or formal people in the U.S. (I'm not saying it is better than the everyday English usage of most, but that it is, indeed, proper English.)
It's an acceptable English translation (some would even say the correct one!) but, unfortuantely, Duolingo has yet to accept it as valid.
Having just had a ding-dong elsewhere on Duolingo when I complained about ending a sentence with a preposition, I have to admit that this is by far the most natural and acceptable way of saying it. "At what are you laughing?" sounds excessively arch and formal to me, and I don't think Duoloingo needs to accept it. (I am probably going to be upbraided now for forcing my views on others.)
i don't think that form is acceptable in English like "what are you looking for" can't be formed like " for what are you looking" for example.
It is actually a valid sentence, but that sort of construction is quite uncommon.
It has fallen out of favour ever since people came to their senses about ending sentences with prepositions (i.e. that it doesn't make sense to follow Latin's rules of grammar in English).
Ok i've come so far in Swedish,and even though i do pretty good,i have to admit that i don't understand Swedish vowels.To me it seems like there are some extra. When i have to write down what is said,sometimes i'll confuse the vowels,because they seem to be the same.
-Could someone explain how to pronounce each vowel ? For example å sounds a lot like ö,but i hear o sounds more like u (but not like english u which is unpure) -Another concern,˝y˝ can sound like I or U ?
If you or anyone else is still interested, here's a great video I found by a channel called "Academia Cervena". It's short, includes some technical jargon and very effective, I'd say. I watched it a few times and after practicing I can identify the different vowel sounds.
He also explains the situations in which certain vowels sound exactly the same (hopefully the link works; make sure to watch part 1 too!). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYArZVTD4s
It's very hard to explain vowels in text. Swedish does have a relatively rich vowel inventory, with a few more than what English has. You can find examples of Swedish vowel sounds here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology
English doesn't have ö and ä, I suppose, but those are pretty close to ё and я, are they? Especially inside of мёд and мяч
- 1449
No, after prepositions you need the object form of du: Jag skrattar åt dig.
In English, 'you' happens to be the same in both cases, but if you reverse the roles, it would be You are laughing at me, not You are laughing at I in English, so it really works the same in both languages.
- 238
Even though both might be translated into "to" in English, they are different words with different usage and meaning.
"Att" is used before infinite verbs in sentences like "Jag kommer att vinna"="I am going to win". It can also be use as "that" in sentences like "Är det sant att jorden är rund" = "is it true that the earth is round".
"Åt" is a preposition that is usually translated to "to", "at" or "for", in the meaning "towards", "directed towards" or "as a favour for". "Sväng till höger"="Turn to the right", "Jag skrattar åt dig"="I'm laughing at you", "Jag städar åt dig"="I'm cleaning for you". Also the phrase "komma åt" means to "access" or "reach". "Jag kan inte komma åt internet" - "I can't access the Internet" (OMG!).
"Åt" is also the past tense of the verb "äta" ("Ate" / "to eat").
Can someone please give me some more examples on when the "åt" preposition is used?? Thanks!
Are there other word for 'at'? I don't remember the word but i'm cocksure i saw another word for 'at'.
The hover dictionary said that "åt" is "at" or "to", does this make "åt" similar to the French à?
- 262
Again we end this sentence with a preposition. That simply is not good English. At what are you laughing? or What is so funny? are much better.
English isn't latin, which is where that rule arose. English here is a lot more like the Scandinavian languages, or German. Moreover, at is a particle here, basically part of a phrasal verb. To laugh and to laugh at have different meanings, just as to look, to look at and to look for have different meanings. In some languages, these are different words. In each case, the " preposition" actually functions to change the meaning of the verb, not to show location or direction. What's so funny is vad är det som är så kul.
"Varfor skratter, Du" just sounds better to me. In English it's more common to ask "What's so funny" or "Why are you laughing?"
Can "åt" always be at the end? I know that one cannot do that in formal American English.
Yes. Ending in a preposition is completely normal in Swedish and English.
