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- "Hon dricker inte öl utan kaf…
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how would one say "She does not drink beer without coffee?" (as in, when it utan without and when is it but?") tack
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It would be the same, but the stress pattern would be a bit different in speech. If you see it in writing, you have to judge from what seems reasonable. In a sentence like this, it's more likely that it would mean "but" (we accept the other version too though), but if it were "Hon dricker inte kaffe utan socker" it could hardly mean "but", since people usually don't drink sugar.
That makes far more sense to me. I don't know if it's good Swedish, but it's more understandable to me.
An old question, but I wanted to know, too...so...I can't answer from the Swedish viewpoint but my dictionary says that, as a preposition, @MEN@ can mean "except; apart from; other than."
If you substitute any of those for @MEN@ in the example sentence, it doesn't work.
Hunden dricker inte te, utan vatten - The dog doesn't drink tea, but water
Kvinnan tycker om vatten men älskar kaffee - The woman likes water but loves coffe
Basically: Utan when sentence is negated, Men when it is not -DUSANSILNI1389
Hon dricker inte öl men kaffe ...why this is wrong? I know that men means but ? :(
Hunden dricker inte te, utan vatten - The dog doesn't drink tea, but water
Kvinnan tycker om vatten men älskar kaffee - The woman likes water but loves coffe
Basically: Utan when sentence is negated, Men when it is not
I see they certainly aren't as strict as German, but are they more random as in English?
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Think of the word "ale" in English to help you remember, since ale and öl are related. :-)
You can very well say "She drinks not beer, but coffee." in English.
That translates perfectly word for word.
Hunden dricker inte te, utan vatten - The dog doesn't drink tea, but water
Kvinnan tycker om vatten men älskar kaffee - The woman likes water but loves coffe
Basically: Utan when the sentence is negated, Men when it is not -DUSANSILNI1389
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Because after a negation you have to use "utan" and not "men". If you know german: aber=men, sondern=utan
@Supu1 Thanks you saved my life. I'm german and now I understand how to use utan it's like in german we say sondern when a sentence is negated.
z.B Er sagte mir nicht dass er ... sondern sagte mir stattdessen ...
Would "She does not drink beer, but drinks coffee" be an incorrect interpretation of the sentence? I can understand why it is not accepted, since it is probably not the most accurate translation, but would it be a logical interpretation in reality? As in saying that someone does not drink one, but does drink the other.
That's twice now that I've tried the equally awkward, "She is drinking not beer but coffee" and gotten it wrong. I guess I just need to write down which English translation of the Swedish translation of "She's drinking coffee, not beer" is the accepted one so I can move on!
Jag dricker inte te utan mjölk.
How do I know which is the correct meaning? ( I drink tea without milk / I drink tea but milk)
This is a great example of a situation that could be confusing. Especially if you were, for example, at a friends house and they offered you a drink. How would they know which one you meant, without clarifying?
You'd likely phrase it differently. "Tack, men jag dricker inte öl. Kan jag få lite kaffe istället?"
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I know it's not really the matter here, but how would you say : "she doesn't drink beer, nor coffee" ? As if she doesn't drink any of these two drinks.
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Is utan used here like... 'but instead... ' ? Since I'm wondering why not use men here.
What's wrong with saying ale instead of beer? I did that and go the answer wrong.
In English, ale is a type of beer (specifically one brewed using warm fermentation, typically resulting in a sweet, fruity taste), so all ales are beers, but not all beers are ales. As far as I know, Swedish does not make this distinction, so 'beer' is the only technically correct translation of 'öl' without further context to say otherwise.
Just started this section. Keep thinking "utan" is "without" here but it is actually "but" here.
Utan is, apparently, also 'without' so how do you know that it dosnt mean beer without coffee?
See explanation above. It has to do with if the sentence uses a negative, like "inte".
Is this more idiomatic in Swedish than 'Hon dricker kaffe, inte öl.' would be? I'm curious because at least in the dialects of English I'm used to using, it's far more common to express this general meaning as 'She is drinking coffee, not beer.' than 'She is not drinking beer, but coffee.'
Because, just like English, Swedish recognizes coffee and tea as two different things (yes, I know that coffee is technically a type of tea, it's just that pretty much nobody calls coffee tea).
If it were tea she were drinking, the sentence would use 'te' instead of 'kaffe'.
There’s no tea in the sentence, but beer. So i was wondering why ”she does not” is not accepted.
That's not the part it doesn't accept. It's not accepting your changing "coffee" into "tea". It needs to say "She does not drink beer, but COFFEE".
The English proposed as the translation seems to be to be barely English. It feels extremely clumsy and feels unfinished - I suggested ""She is not drinking beer, but coffee instead" or better "She is drinking coffee instead of beer." But both were disallowed. The "correct" answer makes me want to add a word at the end like "She is not drinking beer, but coffee does!" I'm not sure why, when the pattern of the sentence cannot be replicated in another language comfortably, the translation should not change the structure in the interest of clarity.
I guess I'm just one of those rare individuals who doesn't drink either ....
What's wrong with saying ale instead of beer? I did that and got the answer wrong.
This sentence would NEVER be said this way by a native English speaker... She is drinking coffee not beer OR they would add "instead" at the end of the sentence.
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No one would actually say this in American English. We would say "she is drinking coffee, not beer."
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While this may be true, you have to remember the purpose of this module is to introduce the different conjunctions and how, when, and why they are used in the Swedish language. Unfortunately, not everything can be "translated" word for word and if you try to do that in some cases, you can alter or lose the intended meaning. You kind of just have to accept how things are as you go along (han har på sig, anyone?). Sometimes the example sentences in this course are not necessarily part of every day Swedish conversation, but are created with the intention to teach us a specific skill. I have been learning Swedish here for a little over a year, and the moderators have done a tremendous job in creating these lessons and responding to comments. I really appreciate you guys!
