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- Topic: Swedish >
- "En av katterna sover."
45 Comments
since he is asking, people should not downvote (which people like to do a lot here), but anyway, the correct sentence in English would be "One of the cats sleeps" the 's' is needed here because it refers only to one subject
184
Scott, it does not make more sense in English. It is ungrammatical in English. The subject of the sentence here is "one", not "cats". In other words, the subject is singular, not plural.
Does the gender of the 'one' coordinate with the prepositional object?
For instance, would "one of the houses is blue" be Ett av husen är blå?
Yes.
edit: But the adjective there would have to agree too, becoming blått.
Dear Zmrzline, i though the correct one finally should be ett av husET är blått - please correct me if I'm wrong
As a natural Englishman we would never say one of the cats sleeps. We would however say one of the cats is asleep. The English in this case is awkward.
I put "One of the cats are sleeping" and it was marked wrong. Even though Swedish doesn't differentiate between present and present continuous, is there another reason my answer is incorrect? Or is it just an error?
it's incorrect in English, you must type "one of the cats is sleeping" because we are referring to "one" in this sentence
Does 'av' mean of and off? One of the questions used 'jag tar av min kläder' i think...which translates to 'i take off my clothes' right?
whats the difference between "One of the cats is sleeping" and "One of the cats are sleeping" in this one. Jag förstå inte.
The latter is wrong. Remember, the subject here is one, not cats. One is singular, therefore we use is. Try taking the words of the cats out of the sentence and say it, then you will understand.
Because the subject of the sentence is "one", not "the cats", and since it's a singular subject, the singular verb form needs to be used.
If you don't do so already, please read through the whole comment section before asking questions to see if your question has already been answered.
It's tricky because one is actually the subject here. I fell for it too but take out the word cats and then try it, you'll see why it has to be is.
Ohh because the subject is talking about one cat even though it looks like it's in the plural form. I hated English class lol
That's also accepted. I really don't think it makes more sense, though. All three accepted translations are perfectly understandable.
NO, thesubject of thesentence is ONE,not CATS. what is your mother-tongue ? it must be the same. In french we say UN des chats DORT. not un des chats DORMENT. in spanish we say, Uno de los gatos DUERME, not DUERMEN. it is the same in german, portuguese ,italian etc.
I am afraid many of you are young people who did not study grammar in their own mother-tongues. WE had to. and it sure helps. At least for the Indo-European languages. I am still not good enough in ( or is it AT) ?Turkish,Swahili,Arabic,Japanese,Hebrew to say if the same rule applies in these langages.
That's also accepted. We have an error report from when you posted your comment that I guess is from you, though. It says
One the the cats is sleeping
Maybe it's because I'm from Yorkshire but never would I say "one of the cats sleeps." In real speech it would sound like one cat had been asleep several times and in "one of the cat's sleeps it maybe had a dream" One of the cats sleep. One of the cats is sleeping. One of the cats is asleep. Can't agree with "one of the cats sleeps."
"sleeping" refers to the "one" cat, not to the "cats". Hence, you need "is sleeping" rather than "are sleeping", for the singular.
