"Sheep get lambs."

Translation:Får får lamm.

December 14, 2014

19 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/HelenCarlsson

– Far, får får får?
– Nej, får får inte får, får får lamm.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/glossboss

Får farfar få får?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Miguel_Rizo

We have a similarly confounding sentence in English: "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." It plays on the different meanings of 'buffalo' and is a complete and grammatically correct sentence, though it doesn't look like one.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Ultorex

In German, we have “Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.”, using the animals flies and the verb to fly. I guess it's harder to construct sentences like this in German with its countless flexions.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Filip1110

In Serbo-Croatian we have "Gore gore gore gore.", meaning "Up there the mountains burn worse."


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/FairFolk

I prefer "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."

Just as correct and more "Fliegen" in a row, no clue why the other version is more common.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Zmrzlina

SIDENOTE:
Interestingly, on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, sheep aren't called "får" but instead "lamm", while lambs are called "lammungar". (lamb children). A Gotlander friend of mine kept correcting me when I visited last summer and enthusiastically called out "FÅR!" whenever we happened to pass some of them. Just a little bit of dialectal trivia. :)


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Andruoduo

the meat of 'får' is btw called 'lamm', too, even if not all of it comes from Gotland: lammkött. And don't mix up lamm with lam !


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

It's only called lammkött if the animal was slaughtered at less than a year of age. Otherwise it's fårkött.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/rwhodges

"Sheep get lambs" is a painfully literal English translation. In English you have a baby, whereas in Swedish you get one. (When you think about it, the Swedish makes a lot more sense.)


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/InnominateOne

It's antiquated, but historically "get" was used as a synonym for "beget (children)" on occasion.

Modern texts still use it infrequently in noun form to refer to offspring. Children of Dune (1976) includes the line:

> You must admit that the bastard get of Paul Atreides would be no more than juicy morsels for those two [tigers].

Finding examples of modern colloquial usage are harder (given that the other, vastly more common uses of "get" dominate search results), but you can still find it used for the offspring of horses (and, I presume, other animals).

Search google for "he and his get are" (with quotes) for a handful of examples of the above.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Yerrick

But surely the preferred and displayed English translation should use "have" as it is the more common word used in this situation by far.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Arnauti

No way, then we'd be stuck with a gazillion jokers wanting to translate the sentence into something about sheep eating lambs, because 'have' can mean 'eat' in English. We're simply not having that :D


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Leftism

Presumably, you're referencing these frustrating sentences? https://youtu.be/GQx3ACpbXhk?t=2m30s


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/GlennaJo

apparently that video is no longer available. :-(


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/ion1122

If you were not making the joke, would it be better to use 'avla' rather than 'få' in modern Swedish, or does the modern Swedish 'få' also mean 'avla' = 'beget'?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/devalanteriel

I'd say no; avla in modern Swedish is closer to "breed" - as in humans breeding a kind of animal.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Keremboiii

We have one in turkish müdür müdür müdür? It means Is the principal principal?

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