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- "Ett glas"
76 Comments
1459
Apart from what NimMalt said, glas has a long a sound and a short s sound, whereas for glass it's the other way round – short a, long s. To a native speaker, the difference is pretty big.
And of course ett glas is not 'a cup', it's a glass in English. 'a cup' is en kopp.
1459
As a serving, I'd say ett glas med glass. But ett glas glass also works, that's slightly more like a measurement, but in practice you can use them pretty much interchangeably.
I'm unsure about what a long and short s sound like, but I think you are wrong about 'glas' having a long-a sound and 'glass' having a short a sound. The long-a sound is English is the sound the 'a' makes in words like 'day'. and 'say'. The short-a sound in English is the sound the 'a' makes in words like 'bat' and 'cat'.
Ice cream or 'glass' in Swedish, should sound similar to the English word 'glass', rhyming with 'class' and 'pass'. Glass or 'glas' in Swedish should sound more like the English word 'gloss', making a vowel sound similar to 'awe' and rhyming with words like 'floss' and 'moss'.
1459
I meant a long a as in a Swedish a sound. The long Swedish a-sound is often misheard by learners as an o sound. You might need to practice listening in order to hear it correctly. There are more resources about pronouncing that can be found from the sticky post under Swedish/Discussions. In English you have fewer vowel sounds than we do and you have a lot of diphtongs rather than pure vowel sounds, so looking at how words are written in English can be misleading.
They are also not the same: a glass is transparent, that's why it is called a glass. A cup is usually not. Simple comparison:
a glass: http://tinyurl.com/pkff4n3
a cup: http://tinyurl.com/ox29yen
122
This is hard to explain in words. The Swedish word "glas" sounds quite similar to the English word 'glass' (the same 'a'-sound as in Brittish 'glass', 'class' and 'car'). The 'a'-sound in the Swedish word "glass" is almost like the 'u' in English 'hut' (which actually sound a bit like the Swedish word "hatt" except that the 't'-sounds aren't the same). Does this make any sence at all?
1459
With the double S, the vowel is short and the consonant is long.
With one S, the vowel is long and the consonant is short.
The difference is huge to native ears, and you'll probably learn to hear it too with practice.
1459
Other words taught in this section are plate, fork, knife, and spoon, so I think glass fits fine.
243
Please be diligent and read through the tips and notes section of each exercise! This is found in Basics 2: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Basics-2 . If you still don't understand, then try to explain what you don't understand.
1459
You should say en, because that's what the absolute majority say. However for that specific word, there's variation, so that a minority of people say ett apelsin.
243
Unfortunately Swedish noun gender quite often is unpredictable. Have a look at this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apelsin#Swedish . It denotes the noun as 'c', which stands for common noun, which means it takes 'en'. You can look up the dictionary for any Swedish nouns and it should tell you whether it's a 'c' (in which case use 'en') or an 'n' (in which case use 'ett').
Did you read the course notes? https://www.duolingo.com/skill/sv/Basics-2
Basically, you have to learn the article together with the word, like you would in German, French, Spanish, etc.