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- "Vi åker hem till byn."
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I don't understand that sentence. Does it mean we are going home which is inside the village or we are going to home and after to the village or we are going from home to the village?
The person is referring to the village as his home, so he/she is going home to the village.
The English just feels really clunky here, I'd agree that it's not very obvious.
I think that there is only one way to interpret the English and that you, ThePRG, have correctly done so. It does not mean: going home from the village nor: going home and then [to] the village. It means: going home, which is the village.
"Hem till byn." I get it. Funny.
You think one of these sentences will be: "Hem Till Midgård?"
Don't hold your breath and look for it, Midgård sadly isn't a word being taught here. ;p
But "travel" should be accepted as an English translation because we can say "travel home" even for mundane travelling such as the daily commute home from work.
I think that it's a stretch to pretend that "go" and "travel" are commonly used the same way. By acknowledging that they are different, we are able to learn the difference between "åka" and "resa". It might not serve us well to obfuscate the distinctions.
My dictionary (stora Esselte) gives as first options for åka: go, ride, drive. I used drive in this translation as one would probably do these days to go to a village, but DL rejected it. I have objected. I think it does not have to be -åka bil- for -åka- to be used as drive, but Anrui or Lundgren8 may correct me.
Not an expert here, but I think "We drive home" would generally be "Vi kör hem." Åka is less specific, just like saying "we go home". It doesn't imply that you're not driving - it just doesn't imply very much at all other than the movement.
This is a very relevant comment as far as I am concerned. Thanks BenUserName.
As far as I understand, it doesn't have to be åka bil for åka to be used as drive when speaking (particularly in the sense that we say drive for the group in English, even though only one of the group in the car is actually doing the driving).
So "drive" might be a correct translation, but then again, it might not. (Maybe our village is very remote and we actually åkte flygplan to get back there! Then in English we would certainly not say that we drove.)
To allow drive for a translation might make learners think that a car was always implied, and it isn't. I think that ride is really the best translation we have for the meaning of åka (and "go" might be the best literal translation, but only as long as you remember that some means of transport other than your feet is implied. You can't say åka if you go by foot: that is gå).
They are pretty much synonyms, but a closer translation to ”travel” would be ”resa”.
en by.
(Typically when an en-word ends with a vowel, you only need to add -n rather than -en to make the definite form, and that's what happens with en by - since 'y' is only ever a vowel in Swedish.)
What is the difference between town and village? If town is "stad", how do you differentiate between town and city?
You don't differentiate between "town" and "city"; rather, you differentiate between "village" and "town/city." I mean, if wanted to differentiate between a town and a city, I'm guessing you could call a place en liten stad or en stor stad.
I tried "We drive home to the village" and it was wrong.
Reading the other comments, I understand that "åka" is best translated as "go." It's not interchangeable with "drive." But here is my question: Does "åka" IMPLY driving? Is going in a car assumed in this sentence?
One of my relatives, many years ago, told me that I should say, "Ska vi gå?" if we will be walking and "Ska vi åka?" if we will be driving. I had asked, "Ska vi gå?" I was thinking of the English phrase, "Shall we go?" Several people laughed and said, "We're not WALKING home from this party! It's several Swedish miles!"
Native Swedish speakers, do you agree that "åka" implies driving and "gå" implies walking?
I think, but I don't have a sure, that "we are going back to teh village" should be accepted :)
The original sentence specifically mentions 'home', which your sentence misses out.
My headphones must be garbage because i have so much trouble in these lessons hearing words. This sounds like "dygn" no matter how many times i listen
"Hem" is a direction, "Hemma" is a location. "Jag är hemma", "Jag går hem".
'We are driving home to the village.' This wasn't accepted, I realize 'going' is also an accepted translation for åker but so is to drive or ride in a vehicle?
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Really wish that somewhere early in the lesson was some clarification that in Sweden a town and a village are distinctly different for purposes of everyday speech. In much of the US they are colloquially synonymous, so not being able to use "town" for by has resulted in some bafflement. I've got it at this point (I think), but an early introduction to that difference would have been both linguistically welcome and culturally interesting.
So: City = Stad. Town = Stad. Village = By. In neighboring Denmark it is City = By/Storby. Town = By. Village = Landsby.
