"Räven är röd. Dessutom har den en lång svans."
Translation:The fox is red. In addition, it has a long tail.
45 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Is the second part ambiguous, as in German? If so, the juxtaposition with the learned conjunction is funnier.
As "röd" also refers to a person with communist sympathies, and "svans" can mean a line of supporters running after him, I think this sentence has a funny ambiguity.
Well, I guess not then... I thought 'svans' might additionally refer to the male genitalia, as with 'Schwanz' in German!
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As a native English speaker, the word Räven looks like Raven to me, which is a bit confusing. I know it's just the Swedish definitive form of räv, but still.
English speakers seems to be able to easily look past diacritics. Myself, it's the reverse.
Stargåte? I can't read it as [geit], but as [gotɛ]
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I like my font a bit small on my screen, so it's hard to see the ä in Räven. Also, my glasses are splotchy (I should probably clean them, but whatever)
And this trivial confusion is exactly why If I ever get a pet fox I am considering just naming it 'räven' (also, it kind of sounds like 'Revan', the name of one of my favorite Star Wars extended universe characters).
Corb is a Scots English word for raven as in the song Twa Corbies. Sadly or perhaps grotesquely, the two ravens are sitting in a tree after a terrible battle, discussing "where shall we gang and dine." More Viking influence on at least one form of English (or vice versa?)
Why is "svans" pronounced with a long a? Seems like a common error with the voice.
Yes, it's an error. When said this way, the word means swan's, like in "belonging to a swan".
"moreover he's the long tail" makes zero sense to me yet it's the correction it's giving me.
the tail is not in any of the accepted answers, so I don't understand how it could ever show up. The thing with he's I've seen before. The accepted answers have it/he has and it/he has got, and Duo is supposed to generate contractions automatically, but there are some errors in this process, so that sometimes he's can be mistakenly generated from he has. This is bound to happen in all courses so hopefully they'll fix to it sooner or later. It's pretty annoying though.
In some contexts, that would actually be accepted English (and almost a bit 'high brow', in a sort of 19th century Britain kind of way; the sort of thing I would expect to hear in Dickens) for example: "He listed all the state capitals in alphabetical order." "Yes, he's quite a memory does he not?"
Of course that is very confusing for people not used to it, but if someone like my mum said it, I wouldn't baulk.
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Would it accept "also" for "dessutom" instead of "in addition"? I would consider these two to be functionally identical in English.
Yes, we accept the following before the clause:
- in addition
- furthermore
- besides
- moreover
- what is more
- also
- additionally
And also "as well" and "too" after the clause.
We accept at least six translations using that word, and over a hundred translations in total. Please consider leaving an error report if it happens again, or posting the entire sentence in the comments. Otherwise, it's impossible for me to tell whether that word was the issue or something else.
It doesn't accept "in addition they have a long tail" which is the same as "in addition he has a long tail" that it corrects me to. Since the Swedish didn't use a gendered word I figured I shouldn't translate it into a gendered sentence?
@thorr18 I think @ElsieDee is talking about the gender-neutral, "singular they": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
@ElsieDee I think the "singular they" is commonly used only for persons.
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is dessutom a formal(ish) word that wouldn't be used in casual conversation, but rather in things like speeches and essays? furthermore and in addition are not used in casual conversation in english so is it the same in Swedish?
I'm glad "in addition" is accepted for "dessutom". The English word "moreover" implies some sort of connection between the fox's colour and the length of its tail, which is clearly nonsense.
It doesn't have to be nonsense; we don't know the context. Furthermore, describing nonsense scenarios is not nonsense!
Earlier in the chapter, Darwin might have identified long tails and red fur to be the two key clues to solving some mystery on the Galápagos; finding both on the same fox is "more" evidence than finding only one.
I'll reply here in regards to some other comment threads that were getting out of hand.
We accept a wide variety of alternatives to "moreover" for this sentence. It's certainly not that we think "moreover" is an excellent idiomatic way of phrasing that natives use all the time - however, we do need to consider which alternative best suits the criteria of being correct, hard to misunderstand, and teaches the Swedish word in the reverse exercise. The last of those is by far the most important, and will frequently lead to less idiomatic English constructions. Having said that, though, we continuously reevalute the course, and I think "in addition" will fit the above criteria better, so I've changed the default translation to that. :)
Not that it is a big deal but the Translation in English says: "The fox is red. In addition, hes a long tail.". Hopefully this minor issue can be fixed.
The translations are listed as "it/he/she has" in the admin interface. I think Duo is trying to be helpful by automatically creating e.g. "he's" for "he has".
It seems like "Furthermore" would be a more accurate replacement of "Dessutom."
Also it has a long tail got marked as wrong. Is dessutom really so particular on the sentence?
No, we do allow that. But your error report says
The fox is red also it has a ling tail
So you just had a typo on "long". :)
How can I say he/ she or they instead of it. I think it's wrong to use it for animals