"She even speaks Swedish."
Translation:Hon talar till och med svenska.
43 Comments
I'm not an expert, but I believe it has to come after "talar" since that is the verb, and till och med is the adverb (I think).
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That would be following the rules, yes. I don't know why I was tempted to break them. ;)
I think "Till och med talar hon svenska" means Even she speaks Swedish (Many people speak Swedish) While "Hon talar till och med svenska" means She speaks even Swedish (she also speaks Spanish, English... etc)
Does it make sense? I am not an expert but that's what I guess
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Not quite, Even she speaks Swedish would be Till och med hon talar svenska. That is a totally acceptable sentence. Till och med talar hon svenska may not be technically wrong, but it still isn't acceptable since it's just too clunky.
@Ellmell: It's an acceptable sentence, but it's not an acceptable translation. It would mean "Even she speaks Swedish", so there's a difference.
I typed it in Till och med hon talar svenska and it came up wrong. Why why why?
I put "Hon till och med talar svenska" would this mean she even SPEAKS Swedish, such as after revealing she can read and write Swedish?
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Yes, that would be the most likely interpretation. (sentence stress on talar).
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Not technically wrong, but it would just be too odd to put the adverb first in this case.
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From this I sense that she speaks many languages, even Swedish. But suppose I want to say "Even she speaks Swedish" (with emphasis on "she") meaning that many people... even she... is able to speak the language.
I noticed "även" is listed. Would there be a major difference between that and "till och med" here?
Till och med is a fixed expression meaning even as in something that exceeds the expected. Även on the other hand is synonymous to också.
A quite contextual adverb. If it's used to form "inte ens...." the construction means "not even..."
"Hon till och med pratar svenska" was accepted for me. Is this correct? I was under the impression that the verb-second rule applied here. Could someone explain why it works this way round too?
In "Hon till och med pratar svenska", I guess the full verb is considered "t.o.m. pratar" or "hon" somehow became part of the adverb. It would mean "She even talks Swedish!" as if she was expected to only type or sign-language it. Maybe she's selectively mute. :) This is different than "t.o.m. hon pratar svenska" where the "t.o.m." belongs to the subject. It would mean "Even she talks Swedish." as if she was the only one expected to be incapable of speech. Also different is "Hon pratar t.o.m. svenska" in which we assigned it to the object. It'd have the meaning "She even talks Swedish"; it's understood that she speaks in other languages, but Swedish is in addition to that understanding and perhaps surprising.
My mate's in sweden always said to me pratar sounds better than talar, e.g. Jag pratar lite svenska.
Can anyone tell me why exactly as language courses always use Talar instead!
"Talar" is more formal, so maybe that is why your mate prefers "pratar". Myself, I use "talar" more in written language and "pratar" more in spoken.
I wrote 'hon pratar svenska till och med' and was marked wrong. I know pratar and talar are pretty much interchangeable, so obviously I put 'till och med' in the wrong place but I'm not sure why?
It's possible that's grammatical in Swedish; it is in English. However it would correspond to a different English translation: "She talks Swedish, even". By placing it at the end it's a different type of sentence with a slightly different meaning. There is no longer any of the three possible emphasied words. Any of "She", "Talks", or "Swedish" could be emphasized, resulting in three different Swedish translations from the same English sentence ("She even talks Swedish) but your translation is a fourth possibility which could only come from a sightly different English sentence. "She talks Swedish, even"
I put talar just before svenska, it accepted it as correct but is either of these technically more correct than the other?
That word order moves the emphasis to talar. "She even speaks Swedish!" has a different connotation than "She even speaks Swedish!"
So is this sentence additional like when you praise someone "She knows many languages and she is fluent in them even she speaks swedish" is this sentence makes sense
The most equivalent translation would be: "Hon kan svenska också" or "Hon behärskar svenska också".
"Hon talar svenska" would mean that she is speaking Swedish right now.
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No, Hon talar svenska means both She speaks Swedish and She is speaking Swedish. Swedish does not distinguish between continuous and simple present, so our present covers both. My first interpretation of Hon talar svenska would be that she knows the language, not that she is speaking it right now.
In normal everyday speech, no one would say "Hon talar svenska" if they mean that she knows the language. They would say "Hon kan svenska" or "Hon behärskar svenska".
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Well, we obviously disagree then. It might be slightly more formal to use talar that way (more formal than kan or pratar, but a little less formal than behärskar), but I for one certainly use it like that.
So "Hon talar till och med svenska" means that she is speaking several languages right now at the same time :)?
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I just answered the same question from mat106 on this page so scroll up. :)
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So "even" in this case is "till och med"? At times like these I have to remember English is often far more confusing. :-)
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It let me putand originally suggested as the answer, "Hon till och med talar svenska" Doesn't this break the "verb second" rule?
