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- "Vad gör ungdomarna?"
51 Comments
Is 'ungdom' used to refer to the youth as a whole and 'ungdomarna' for a certain group of them? Or are they the same?
What the youngsters do? is not accepted. Sorry, my english is not good, but why it's not identical in this case?
Interrogative pronouns (what, in this case) require an auxiliary (or helping) verb. E.g., What did they do, What is going on, What should we do, etc.
What's wrong with "What do youngsters do?"? it's a copy paste from what i've written in the exercise
EDIT: As always, i overlooked the definite form. "What do the youngsters do?" is accepted.
Would 'what does the youth do?' or 'what is the youth doing?' be accepted as a translation? I know ungdomarna implies plural + article and 'the youth' is uncountable. Or is the Swedish sentence for this different?
Is undomarna a common way to refer to children? In english I would never expect anyone under 70 to say youths or youngsters...
1439
It's a common word, but it's not used about children, but young people. There doesn't seem to be a perfect English equivalent, but ungdomar could be roughly 15-25.
I would maybe call that age group "young adults"? That seems about the same age range to me.
Maybe "adolescent", then? Though I think that refers more to ages 13-20 or so. To some, I think young adult can mean 20-40, but to others it can mean 15-25ish, or at least that's what I think of when I hear "young adult". I don't think any of the english words like that have such a clearly defined age, but that could just be me. (Same with youth, which I think of as kind of 5ish-15, but aparently some thing of it as more what ungdomar are)
- 1439
Yeah, there's no perfect translation for this word. I'll leave it to the English native speakers on the team to decide if we should change it and in that case into what.
In my experience what age range an English speaker is talking about in situations like this depends a lot on the age of the speaker. 'Young people' can often mean anyone who's at least one generation younger than the speaker (though certainly not always).
It's one reason the term 'Millennial' is kinda loaded. It refers to a specific cohort of people, but kinda became synonymous with 'young adult'. So when people of that cohort began entering their 30s (and soon 40s), it started to feel really dissonant.
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Here are some examples of how the word "youngster" is used:
"Advertising of the iPhone has led it to become very popular. If a youngster is going to get a phone for the first time, there is a huge change that he/she will get an iPhone just because it’s an option which everyone knows about."
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-iPhone-so-popular-among-youngsters
"Promising West Brom youngster popular for all the right reasons. . . . West Bromwich Albion's most endearing midfield enforcer might need to toughen up, with Ben Foster suggesting the teenager is 'almost too nice.'"
"PEER GROUPS: Social skills --> youngster’s popularity during adolescence Some youngsters – both boys and girls –are both aggressive and popular at the same time"
"They're too quiet! What are those youngsters doing?" Parents, especially grandparents, would refer to youths who might get into mischief as "youngsters." It is a semi-affectionate term. Generally "youngsters" refers to adolescents, but the term can be used for a wider range of young people, including anyone younger than the speaker: "Those youngsters haven't discovered really good music yet."
Could anyone knowing any slavic languages confirm whether or not this is relatedd to the word "omladina"
What the young people do? Was not accepted. I thought that in questions like the subject could go before the werb without having to change to passive. At least her Ih ear this sequence all the time but of course it doesn't make it grammatically correct .
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What do the young people do? Or: What are the young people doing? "What the young people do?" is not grammatically correct English.
I'm getting the sense here that 'ungdom' might be better translated as 'young adults' than 'youngsters' in modern English. It's clearly not (based on the comments) used in a way that would be equivalent to 'barn', but also obviously distinct from regular adults given the use of 'ung'.
The problem with that term is that it normally means people older than the lower limits of ungdom - except in young adult fiction, where instead the higher limit is lower than that of ungdom. So it's a great fit for a small age span, but a bad one otherwise.
OK, I'm really curious now, what would a rough age range then be for 'ungdom'? I'm curious because 'youngster' is even less well defined at least here in the US than 'young adult' is (and depending on context could be someone well into their 40's or 50's even).
It's relative - I actually just heard a woman in her ~60s call two people clearly in their 30s ungdomar, only an hour ago. She was obviously expecting a laugh, but still. But I'd say no younger than twelve, and without context no older than about 25. Something like that. Note that you might very well get a different answer from another native.
Believe me, I've long since gotten used to getting differing answers from multiple people when asking about Swedish, though usually with respect to pronunciation or idiomatics instead of definitions.
Sweden has a fairly wide range of dialects and sociolects, so getting different advice on pronunciation and idiomatics from different speakers is to be accepted. I generally aim to talk about the most general and common way of speaking, and note why if not.
It's not quite as bad as English, though. :)
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I think youngsters is a good middle ground. To say What are the youths doing? has a negative connotation in (British) English; a bit like saying What are those yobs up to?
Ungdomarna = the young, the young people, right? Well, Duo does not think so.
in German slang you could say "was geht mit den Jugendlichen" which would translate to English "what's up with the youngsters". Is that an accurate translation or is the sentence formal Swedish?
That depends a bit on the sentence and context, but generally speaking, "do" is habitual or not time-dependent, and "are doing" is a continuous, current activity.
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The judge in "My Cousin Vinnie": Did you say "youts? Vinnie: Excuse me, your honor... two youths.
I'm American and over 70, and this expression went out 50 years ago in this country. People say 'what are the kids doing?' And kids can be anybody younger than you, though usually under 30, such as children, grandkids, etc.
Sure, but if "kids" was the translation, people would without question learn that ungdomar means "children". This is one of those cases where idiomatics have to give way for actually teaching Swedish.
Why would you say that children is fine as a translation? The Swedish word ungdom is always someone older than a child, never an actual child. Like adolescent, but covering a slightly broader range.
Children is fine as the translation. Youngsters is very old slang and no one says it.
