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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Han har flera elefanter."
45 Comments
The comments on duolingo make trying to learn another language a lot more interesting and fun
Uh oh, I've started to write English words with the Swedish spelling. For instance "He has several elefants" or "salt and peppar".
I do exactly the same thing, plus a slightly more unfortunate typo when translating "kocken"
Is it proper to say "many" for flera or is their a separate word for many
The answer told me it's supposed to be 'he has more elephants', but isn't 'flera' supposed to mean 'several'?
1460
flera means several and fler means more, but people often say flera when they mean fler, so that's an accepted answer too.
Are any of these idioms or colloquialisms? I know a lot of the crazy sentences on the German lessons are.
I keep confusing "han" and "hon" when not thinking about it consciously. In Spanish -a indicates feminine and -o is masculine so to me it always sounds just exactly the other way around. :D
I agree. The spanish throws me off too. I find that HANs Solo helps me remember this one..if you are a star wars fan that will mean something. Hans is a male and Hon is female. Good luck.
- 401
I could remember it when i thought that hon could be short for honey, and that's more often said to women
I put "He has several elephants" and duo told me it was wrong and should have been "He's got several elephants"
This is just not right...I mean...I tried "some, a few, a couple, " to no avail. They mean the same as several...not to mention I havent heard "several" in any English conversation over the past 20 years Ive been using the language. I just hate typing in a long word that no one ever uses.
- some = några
- few = få (and a few = några få)
- a couple = ett par or några
"several" is a very common word in English, and not synonymous with any of the above. The Guardian used it 97 times in the past 24 hours, according to Google. The same number is 260 for the NY Times, though that includes advertisements. And it's hardly uncommon in speech, either.
It's also just seven letters. I mean... come on.
Actually those are the synonyms of several - I double checked in a dictionary as well. And just because The Guardian used it a hundred times, it still does not make it a word frequently used in speech. I work in English although its not my native tongue...but like I said the last time I heard it was in high school maybe. I guess it just depends on what do you really want to use here, a written formal English or the one people actually speak :) Newspaper and CNN English is far from spoken English. Not the fault of the Swedish course though, and thanks for the Swedish clarification, cheers...I'm just gonna copy paste several then :)
I fully respect that you and those with whom you are acquainted do not use it. But I assure you that is is not uncommon in everyday native speech. I've heard natives use it all the time. It is not a formal word by any means.
"several" can occasionally mean the same amount as either of the above, especially colloquially, yes. But it's still a poor translation in isolation. The course can't really accept what would usually be incorrect for the sake of occasionally working.
What is the difference between 'flera' and 'många'?
Am I totally wrong if I guess that 'flera' would mean "more than one" and 'många' would mean even bigger lot? Like 3 elephants would be 'flera' and 100 of them would be 'många'?
As a native Finnish speaker i don't quite get the difference between those two, neither in English nor Swedish. They both seem to translate to the exactly same words in Finnish. :/
Swedish and English share the same general system:
- få = few = a small amount
- många = many / lots / a lot of = a large amount
Then you have flera / several which typically has a dictionary definition of "more than a few but fewer than many". I suspect that's what you find problematic. In practice, there is no fixed limit between them, and there are even regions where "several" and "many" are used interchangeably. But as a general rule, if you're thinking "that's a lot", you probably shouldn't use flera / several.
Hope that helps. :)
In the audio, "har" sounds exactly the same as "ar" which would've made the sentence "He is several elephants." How can I distinguing the sound of the two words in conversation?
ar isn't a word in Swedish, though. You mean är, which uses a completely different vowel with a different sound. So there's no risk for confusion. :)
Given that I can't discern the vowel sounds as I stated in my original comment, there IS risk of confusion for me. If anyone has intentions to legitimately help me with this I'll appreciate it.
Would you like me to make a recording for you, to clearly showcase the differences?
Doesn't have to be so literal. My son has several toy elephants, for instance.
