"Nej, det finns inget kaffe."

Translation: No, there is no coffee.

[Laski-Julle]

Why I can't say "No, there isn't any coffee."?

[Arnauti]

This is a ghost sentence. It's been deleted from the course, but it still shows up, and we can't change it.

[Snaptastic]

I found this annoying too. Surely there must be a fix for this - it's not really deleted from the course if it still shows up :)

[frogonastring]

This is a dark question indeed.
"Why is the coffee always gone?"

[dellabitzke]

I am just curious as to why saying "det är inget kaffe" would not be considered correct? I did find that the verb finns (form of finna) meant to find. I'm just wondering if someone could shed some light on why this is like this in swedish.

[Arnauti]

It's correct, but it means "it/that is no coffee". The verb finns means exists, it is not really a form of finna (which does mean to find), rather it's another verb but they're related of course.

[dellabitzke]

Ohh, okay. It seems that there are so many synonyms in swedish. I do appreciate the response though. It did help!

[andrewlilja]

Why isn't this "Nej, det finns inte kaffe?"

[Arnauti]

I'm recycling a comment from another thread, hope this helps:

• inte means not.
• ingen is used to negate nouns: ingen for en nouns, inget for ett nouns, and inga for plural.
• nej is only used as the opposite of yes.

[andrewlilja]

So "det finns inte kaffe" would mean "there isn't coffee" and "det finns inget kaffe" would mean "there is no coffee," with special emphasis on the noun? Can you even negate "det finns" with "inte?"

Also — because this is "inget" and not "ingen," does that imply that there is no coffee, say, anywhere in the house, as opposed to there not being a cup of coffee?

[Arnauti]

Yes, det finns inte kaffe would be there isn't coffee, and det finns inget kaffe means there is no coffee, I don't think there needs to be any special emphasis though? It's just that inget/no refers to the noun.

About ingen/inget, yes, and therefore it will almost always be Det finns inget kaffe, because it is a bit strange to speak about en kaffe that way unless there is some very specific context.