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- "Till och med farfar sjunger."
46 Comments
Is there a literal translation/equivalent to this in English? Or some way for my brain to remember it better?
The most literal translation that is used in English is probably "up to and including" (the actual literal translation is "to and with"). "family members up to and including grandfather are singing".
But like others said, it is used as a common phrase.
But I also thought that "till och med" or "t.o.m" as is written in some Swedish ads means "until".
Is it ambiguous in this usage? (I.e. could this mean "Until grandfather sings"?)
Not really, then you’d rather use tills farfar sjunger. You mostly use till och med with dates and such, like:
- Från och med nu (fr.o.m.), till och med (t.o.m.) onsdag. = From now until Wednesday.
I feel the above "to and with" ("up to and including") explanation makes this less confusing because "up to and including [a date/time]" is like "until", but "up to and including grandpa" is like "even".
Till och med implies exceeded expectations, whereas även means also. So, well, not really.
Thanks, because this was the most confusing sentence I have seen. It looks like "To and with grandfather sings." and I thought it was an error.
Why in this sentence the use of "till och med" + the subject in the first position is correct, whereas in the previous example (Hon till och med talar med svenska) was considered incorrect?
1035
This is because of the V2 rule: the verb needs to be in second place (in all main clauses that are not questions).
till och med farfar counts as a unit here, because you can replace it with who, he or something like that. So if you wanted to say that even she speaks Swedish, you could have the word order Till och med hon talar svenska, because the subject of that sentence is Till och med hon, whereas in your sentence, till och med does not belong to the subject.
The constituents that count for the V2 rule can be very long, for instance in sentences with subclauses, the first constituent can be a whole clause.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, now it's clear! is there any rule to determine how to form a unit with different words (like adv + subjects + ...)?
- 1035
There's a good description in Swedish here: http://www.student.umu.se/under-studietiden/studieverkstad/skriftliga-uppgifter/skrivrad-och-sprakhjalp/ordfoljd-i-huvudsatser-och-bisatser/
I translated "Till och med farfar sjunger" as "Even grandpa is singing", but it marked it as wrong saying correct is "even MY grandpa is singing", which I though was obvious from context. Wouldn't that be "Till och med min farfar sjunger"?
- 1035
Weird, the incubator tells me that answer is accepted. We accept both the version with and without my here. You would use my a little bit more often in English than we would in Swedish.
What we don't tend to accept are sentences starting with Paternal grandpa … because that sounds unnatural in English without a my, but other than that, we accept all combinations.
- 676
It seems that: All including grandfather are singing would be at least equally accurate translation but it is listed as a wrong one.
- 1035
Yes, I think it's a bit too far from the original. There's no need to rephrase the sentence that much.
- 676
Just out of curiosity, if you say `Till och med farfar' does it imply a plural or singular object in Swedish.
- 1035
It's harder to tell than in English because you can't see from the verb. But if I add a phrase with sin + something, it reveals itself as singular just as in English. So we'd also say for instance, random example: Till och med farfar tar sin hatt, 'Even grandfather takes his hat'. (if we'd say sina hattar instead, it would clearly mean that he took several hats).
Can you not write "t.o.m." as an answer or is that too advanced? It was marked wrong
- 2243
We don't generally allow abbreviations. If we did, people who didn't understand them would see them by accident and get confused.
"Everyone including grandad is singing" is not accepted. Should it be or is there a nuance?
- 2243
There's a difference - maybe grandma isn't singing even though grandpa is?
Sometimes the sj sounds roughly like "khw" as in spanish "Juan", and sometimes I hear something like "sh" sound inside there as well, like in this sentence. Kan någon förklara det?
- 2243
Those are two different sounds: the sj-sound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sj-sound) and the tj-sound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolo-palatal_sibilant). You can find some excellent videos on both here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUb87YTKOTgnGcAM4toC-6A/videos
No, no. I am not talking about the tj sound in words like "köp", I am talking about the sj sound having 2 different variations as far As I can hear: Sometimes its "khw" and sometimes "shkhw" (a bit hard to transcribe...) like in this recording.
- 2243
Could you give an example of each? I don't quite understand what you mean.
In this context, it implies that grandfather is singing along with other people even though he doesn't usually. Would the word order have to change to make it mean 'grandfather is even singing?' (i.e. Grandfather is so happy that he is even singing, amongst other activities)
