"She even speaks Swedish."
Translation:Hon talar till och med svenska.
39 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Hon talar ens svenska? What is the difference between ens and till och med?
How about, "Till och med talar hon svenska." ? Would that be wrong?
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).
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
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?
Yes, that would be the most likely interpretation. (sentence stress on talar).
Not technically wrong, but it would just be too odd to put the adverb first in this case.
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.
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 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.
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!"
796
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"
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
As Arnauti wrote above:
ens is only used together with a negation: inte ens means not even.