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- "She even speaks Swedish."
"She even speaks Swedish."
Translation:Hon talar till och med svenska.
48 Comments
1460
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.
I typed it in Till och med hon talar svenska and it came up wrong. Why why why?
1460
Not technically wrong, but it would just be too odd to put the adverb first in this case.
191
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.
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.
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"
973
It let me putand originally suggested as the answer, "Hon till och med talar svenska" Doesn't this break the "verb second" rule?
1460
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.
1460
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.