"Jag lät björnen sova."
Translation:I let the bear sleep.
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Number 1-why lät and not låt? Number 2: That was a very wise decision to let the bear sleep. Now run very far away.
Låta is one of those verbs that change the vowel in past tense.
Han låter björnen sova = He lets the bear sleep
Han lät björnen sova = He let the bear sleep
No but the noun en låt is probably derived from the verb låta 'sound'. Or if it's the other way round, I'll leave that to historians, but for sure it's the same root.
It's a shame this exercise doesn't use your example, since I let has ambiguous tense in English, whereas he let does not.
Indeed. In translating it from English to Swedish, both present and past work due to the ambiguity.
So, "Do not wake the bear who sleeps" - but why is it "den björn" and not "björnen"? Sorry, my Swedish grammar isn't that great, but I thought we only needed "den" when an adjective came before the noun, so like "Den dålig dagen" = "The bad day", but because in this case we are saying "the bear who sleeps" (rather than "the sleeping bear")... do we still have to use "den", or is that just the way this expression is?
It is a fixed expression. But yes, normally, you are right. By the way don't forget you need the adjective to be definite as well: Den dåliga dagen.
Well, it seems not only to be a fixed expression. If I remember another discussion right the -en is missed out here because of the relative subordinate clause beginning with "som".
I can't find anything about it on Google, but my grammar book has (without pointing it out) a similar example: De barn som jag redan gett biljetter kan går. (I would have expected here also barnen as it's definite plural...)
Is it just me or is the TTS for "jag lät" very weird, or maybe it's how it's meant to be said?
I got this as a 'type what you hear', and the slow speech sounded normal, but I found the normal speech odd.
510
Sort of confusing. Sova is the infinitive, but it hides in this translation. But it appears if i say " i allowed the bear to sleep" yikes
- 510
This lesson is about infinitives. But in the translation "I let the Bear sleep" there is no infinitive, at least in English. .
There is technically. English just doesn't have a separate form for the infinitive so we can only recognize it if there is a to there.
Infinitive is the un-conjugated verb form: As 'bear' is the third person even English would normally conjugate the verb: The bear sleeps.
As you don't say 'I let the bear sleeps' - the infinitive is even in English obvious. (Keep in mind: The Swedish 'att', the English 'to' or the German 'zu' is not always necessary to indicate the usage of the infinitive)
In English we say "let sleeping dogs lie.". I like the Swedish better. :)
