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- "Den gamla damen har en fin k…
"Den gamla damen har en fin klänning på sig."
Translation:The old lady is wearing a nice dress.
16 Comments
Hi guys, in Italian, to call someone old would be considered unpolite. We often use some kind softer words. So I was wondering, is that okai in Swedish to refer directly to someone as "gammal"?
Except Juventus, I take it. :p
It depends on the context. If you're just describing a person, saying they're old isn't weird at all. Calling somebody old to their face without proper reason is rude.
To my Midwestern U.S. ears, even describing someone as an "old lady" is disrespectful. Also, some men will use it to refer to their wives, but show their disregard for them when they do so. If you insist on using "lady," I would suggest "elderly lady" for the English translation.
An idiomatic way to say it in English (not, however accepted by Duolingo) would be "the old lady has on a nice dress." I reported it.
Personally (to my American ears), both positions of "on" sound perfectly normal and more or less interchangeable. I think I might prefer "to have on ____" if there's going to be several adjectives, or especially with a list of items.
Agreed. I tried "the old woman has a fine dress on" and that was rejected
When you have an adjective before a definite noun, you have to use the double definite -- both the front article (the separate word: den, det, or de) and the back article (the suffix on the noun). When you have no adjective, you simply use the suffix on the noun, without the front article.
I don't really think "a good dress" covers the meaning very well.
