26 Comments
Just curious, Does Swedish require a capitalized 'D' in December, as in English?
837
No, that's actually wrong in Swedish. We don't capitalize the words for months, days of the week, nationalities, or languages (well unless they're at the start of a sentence). We only capitalize names, and we don't consider those words to be names.
why isn't We eat a lot of food in December accepted? only we eat much food is which doesn't seem right
That must have been a bug - what you write is actually the default translation.
- 23
Is the meaning of "i december " more like "any December in general" or "this upcoming December specifically" or can it mean both depending on context?
- 837
No, months are just like in English, they use i. på december would be like saying on December in English.
Tack så mycket! I always get 'i', 'om' and 'på' confused in this section!
- 837
The months and the days of the week are the easy ones since they're the same, on Monday -> på måndag and in January -> i januari. But I understand that it's easy to mix up the easy ones too, since not everything is as straightforward as these two.
- 692
Is 'much' a good direct translation of 'mycket'? Although using 'much' would often make for very archaic sentences in English, I'm guessing the two words come from the same root.
- 837
It's an accepted translation here, but it does sound archaic to me at least. (native speaker of Swedish though). I'm sure they have a common root.
- 692
Ah, OK, thank you - I didn't realise it was accepted here (I don't think it's suggested?). I think back in the Basics lesson I tried to translate "tack så mycket" directly as "thanks so much" and it was marked wrong. And yes, 'much' does sound archaic in this sentence.
- 837
Unfortunately, all accepted answers can be suggested to you, but which ones you'll see depends on what you input. We don't aim to accept things that sound archaic or unnatural but it's hard to be 100% consistent, so what's accepted in 'fringe cases' may vary on different sentences.
Well, you're missing the "food" part. I know eating anything else sounds ridiculous, but it's the same in Swedish. :)
I was reading previous comments and there was one like mine, on which Zmrzlina answered it's acceptable answer. So i tried and it didn't work :)
Oh, I see. Sorry, I didn't realise. :) Well, his answer is over three years old and the sentence has not been edited for over three years, so I don't really know if there's a backstory there. For now, I'll delete that comment chain, we do intend the full sentence here.
- 1352
Are you saying that "Vi äter mycket i december" is more logical in Swedish as well, and would be the correct translation for "We eat a lot in December"?
Either way works well in Swedish - vi äter mycket or vi äter mycket mat - but the former should not translate into "a lot of food", and the latter not into "a lot".
Surely this translation needs adjusting, to me a native english speaker, the sentence tells me it's either past or future tense.
We WILL eat a lot of food in December.
We ATE a lot of food in December.
Really? If you say "we always it a lot of food in December", would you consider that as weird?
