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- "Till och med farfar sjunger."
52 Comments
152
Is there a literal translation/equivalent to this in English? Or some way for my brain to remember it better?
1483
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!
1483
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/
1483
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.
1483
Yes, I think it's a bit too far from the original. There's no need to rephrase the sentence that much.
1483
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).
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