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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Vi äter mat nu."
25 Comments
Does the addition of 'mat' sound as weird in Swedish as it does in English or is it required in this sentence?
Why do we need the 'mat'? Would vi äter nu be acceptable? Perhaps it doesnt specify that it is food that we are eating, but it is acceptable in english, so thought i would ask.
1493
This word order sounds formal in an odd way. It isn't totally grammatically wrong, but it's unnatural enough not to be an accepted answer.
nu is a time adverbial and those typically prefer to go at the end or start of a sentence. The kind of adverbial that typically does go in that place [= between 'äter' and 'mat' in this example] are sentence adverbials (the kind of adverbial that modifies the whole sentence or says something about the speaker's attitude to the whole sentence) inte, 'not' is a typical example, which would go there: Vi äter inte mat.
if I put 'nu' at the beginning of this sentence, then would it be 'nu ater vi mat' ?
You don't usually use commas before adverbs in English, either. (You can in some cases, but it's not a general rule.)
- 1493
It isn't necessary like in Jag lagar mat, you can definitely say Vi äter nu (and that sounds much better, in my opinion).
I would argue that "We are eating food" should be an accepted translation, as it is written in the present continuous tense? The "now" feels redundant to me in English.
- 210
In English, this phrase seems to be missing a possessive adjective? It would make more sense to say, "Vi äter vår mat nu", but I'm not sure if that makes sense in Swedish? Tack!
