"Vi åker till fjällen."
Translation:We are going to the mountains.
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Fjäll is specifically used to refer to the mountains between Sweden and Norway. They could also just refer to mountains that reach above the tree limit.
In the sentence of the topic they most certainly mean the mountains between Sweden and Norway and the speaker is probably going on vacation either hiking (in the summer) or skiing (in the winter).
There’s a similar distinction with flod and älv meaning ’river’. But the latter only refers to the rivers of northern Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Ett fjäll is a flat-topped mountain that reaches above the tree line in Lapland (which streches across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia) or in Scotland. 'A fell' is a good alternative translation if one wants to make a distinction between ett fjäll and ett berg. The Finnish Father Christmas (Jultomten in Sweden or Julgubben in Finland), by the way, does not live on the North Pole, but in the Finnish Lapland on a fell called Korvatunturi (tunturi = ett fjäll in Finnish).
I wish the course had ett fjäll somewhere. I keep seeing fjällen and thinking it's a definite singular en word.
a question about the preposition: To German you preferably translate "Wir gehen in die Berge". "in" works just with plural definite. Could you say this in Swedish too "att åka i fjällen"?I have found that with google, but is this OK?
No, you cannot say "åka i fjällen". That makes it seem like your going around inside the mountain area. The preposition "till" is required if you're talking about direction.
How come to the mountain was not accepted, does fjällen only imply plural?
Yes, that's correct - even though fjäll is the same in the singular and plural, that's only for the indefinite form. The definites are fjället (sg) and fjällen (pl). So you can tell it's not a single mountain.
So why was I marked wrong for saying We travel to the mountains?
Yes, I know. But Norstedt's also lists travel as a definition. And, if you are "going to the mountains" - a distance - you are obviously travelling.
I do see your point, but there are many situations here where the point is to teach the word in isolation rather than contextualised. This is largely because Duolingo's backend system doesn't allow for distinguishing between accepted solutions in such a way that the feedback given when making errors is always usable. I'd accept "travel" if it worked slightly differently. As it is, if you enter e.g. "We go the to mountains" by mistake, the system might tell you that no, gå means "travel", not "go". This happens all of the time if you're not careful as a course contributor. :(
I live in Yorkshire and up North the term for the hilly terrain is fells and dales... Remnants of Viking settlers