"They like it."
Translation:De tycker om det.
21 Comments
Can someone explain the difference between de and dom? And the difference between det and den in this sentence?
”De” is spelt such but pronounced ”dom” (the audio voice gets it wrong). ”Det” refers to an ett-word, or a word of unknown gender. It would have been den if it referred to an en-word.
I just got marked incorrect for not selecting "de tycker om den" - are "den" and "det" interchangeable when the sentence is simply "they like it", without knowing what "it" is?
857
This can be about some thing, which could then be either an ett or en noun. Like, 'I gave them a book. They like it'.
Is this like using sie or er in German as "it" and hem in Dutch as "it" and elle / il as "it" in French?
If so, is det feminine and den is common? Äpple is det, flicka is den?
- 857
Yes, it's like using sie/er/es or elle/il as 'it'.
Common gender is 'common' to all nouns that used to be feminine or masculine historically, the other words are neuter ('it'). So words like flicka, man, kvinna, pojke are not feminine/masculine in Swedish, they are common gender.
Ok thank you! For some reason I was thinking ett was feminine and en was masc/neuter. Oops. I guess ett is neutral. Thanks! :D
So if you don't know the object being referred to, should you default to den or det?
- 857
den as long as you're really referring to an unknown object. If you need to have a pronoun solely for grammatical reasons, it'll be det.
What's the difference between saying De gillar det and De tycker om det?! Are they just interchangeable?
- 857
Basically, yes. gillar is a tad more colloquial but there's no real difference in meaning.
Call me an idiot, but i still dont understand when i need to use "om" and when i dont, can anyone help me?
I'm just curious if the word order is flexible here. Is it possible to say "De tycker det om?" or does it just not make sense? It somehow sounds better to me in this order.
These answers seem really inconsistent. Sometimes det is accepted, sometimes it isn't. Am I missing something?
- 857
Both det and den are accepted here, because this is a sentence where we're talking about a specific object, but we don't know what that object is. In many sentences, only det works because it is an 'empty' pronoun that does not refer to a specific object. (we usually compare with it in it is raining) I think it's pretty consistent in the course by now, there may be some errors left but there aren't huge amounts of them. Ask again on other sentences if there isn't already an explanation in the comments there.
Ah, I understand. Thanks very much.
