"You are drinking my cat's milk."
Translation:Du dricker min katts mjölk.
21 Comments
Was this milk that was intended for the cat, or (even worse) given by the cat, for her kittens? In real life this could also play out with a guest: "Dude, you are drinking my wife's milk!"
Why can't i say "du dricker min kattens mjölk"? The cat is mine, therefore he is THE cat - katten. I am trying to find a logic, but Swedish breaks it completely.
382
It is quite simple really. You can say either "du dricker min katts mjölk" or "du dricker kattens mjölk" but you can't say "du dricker min kattens mjölk" just as in English you can't say "you are drinking my the cat's milk" - the rule works the same in both languages in this instance.
My guess is that 'min katten' is redundant. Do you speak Norwegian? That's how they do it. I don't know Danish, it could be the same there too.
Exactly... I chose "kattens" as well because I thought that the speaker means a particular cat. His/her cat, so it's by all means THE cat. :( I can totally get why we ommit "the" in English. It's a separate word. Ending -en is just a suffix that slightly changes the meaning of the word so I assumed it should stay in place whenever this altered meaning is meant. Swedes should sit and think about it... :(
A genuine question: if the speaker has more than one cat, are “my cat” and “the cat” still the same thing? Either way, -en changes the meaning just as much as “the” and is excluded for the same reason as in English.
There is no context given and therefore we have no idea how many people are drinking the milk, so surely both Ni and Du should be accepted?
- 885
They are, and if you get it as a multiple choice question, you have to choose both.
Swedish doesn't have the "you are drinking" continuous, so we use du dricker for both that and "you drink".
Yes and no:
du is to dig as "I" am to "me" - so dig dricker would be like saying "me drink" instead of "I drink.
ni is to er in the same way, but it's the plural you, i.e. more than one person. So we accept ni as well.
Why is there no apostrophe after katt if the milk belongs to the cat? (i.e Du dricker min katt's mjolk) (sorry I can't put the correct vowel in the sentence due to English keyboard)
Because "kattens" means "the cat's".
"Du dricker min kattens mjölk" tranlates to "You are drinking my the cat's milk", which sounds odd.
