- Forum >
- Topic: Swedish >
- "The children's dogs"
"The children's dogs"
Translation:Barnens hundar
17 Comments
Barn is an ett-word, yes. But this is the children's dogs, in the definite plural. Barnets is definite singular.
I thought that the THE was related to dogs and not to child, so i wrote "Barnets" too
Ok. I have a good question. The subject in this sentence is not the children but the dogs. I had incorrect for typing : "Barnens hundarna". You follow me?... I was wondering if my sentence was more idiomatically correct?
1364
We never use the definite after nouns in the genitive, just like you don't in English. You wouldn't say the children's the dogs. It's the same in Swedish.
It's also the same with possessive pronouns. We say min bok 'my book' and you cannot have a definite noun instead in either language – you can't say "my the book" and you couldn't have boken after min in Swedish either.
Ok. That was very enlightening. I understand a little bit more now. Tack så mycket!
- 1364
It could be explained along these lines: the basic meaning of the definite form is to say 'you know which one I mean'. But since when you reach the word in question, you have already said something that makes it clear that it is something known, it doesn't make sense to add that grammatical marker. (if this doesn't make sense to you, just disregard it – it's just a suggestion for how to think of it).
"Barnet" is the definitive form of "Barn" (child), so "Barnet" means "The child", because of the "et" at the end. And "Barnen" is the definitive form of "The children". Each time you see a "S" at the end of a noun, it's always going to be a possessive form (like putting a ('s) in english. So "Barnens" means "The Children's"-->somethingpossessed. So "Barnens Hundar" means "The children's dogs".
- 193
Could "barns hundarna" also work as a translation, since knowing which word the the belongs to is a little vague in English? This wasn't my answer, I'm just wondering.
No, that doesn’t work. That would be the equivalent of ”children’s the dogs” which doesn’t make sense in English either.
I can see what Jayna Johns is getting at, perhaps better phrased as 'the dogs of the children' - but would that be phrased in a similar way in Swedish to the English?
No, because Swedish does not use the of-construction as English does in examples like these.
new question: there is a phrase that is quite the same in my exercise, "Our children´s books", which translates into "våra barns böcker". I guess you will say this one (the children´s dogs) is a definite form, and the other one is not. But i can not understand why the other is not. In italian, we translate the two into: - "i cani dei bambini" (barnens hundar, hund = cane and barn = bambino) - "i nostri libri" which is equivalent to "i libri di noi" (våra = nostri/di noi and böcker = libri) both cases have the same "genitive" ("dei bambini" = "di noi"), so it is quite hard to get why I can not put "våra barnens böcker"
