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There are countless watercourses of very varying size in Sweden, and consequently there are a handful of words to refer to them. In a very rough fashion of small-to-large there are bäck, å, ström and älv/flod, but where one stops and the next applies may vary regionally.
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It can be said quite safely, though, that en bäck is about the size of a ditch. You could probably jump over a bäck.
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En å is quite hard to narrow down in explanation. It's a small river, definitely bigger than en bäck but not bigger than en älv (which isn't a very good explanation to non-natives, I know).
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En ström is relatively infrequent and I won't go into depth on it here.
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En älv is largely synonymous with en flod and it's what we'd call a river, but it's use is found mostly in the Northern 2/3 of Sweden. No Swedish river is called en flod in its Swedish name.
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En flod can be used for rivers abroad, especially large ones.
Perhaps that is more than what you asked for but... I guess you'll just have to count yourself lucky to have asked a geographer. :p
No, that's awesome! That fully explains everything! And I love geography too, by coincidence!
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En älv is used for river in Norden, en flod outside Norden. E.g. in Finland we have Kymmene älv.
Is there also a difference depending on where the rivers flows to? Like French fleuve (flows to the sea/to a lake) and rivière (flows to another river) - the only language I've heard (so far) which have specific terms for this.
Would it be possible to assume that the differences could be determined in terms of navigability – "en å" being bigger than "en bäck", but still impossible to navigate whereas "en älv/flod" is large or deep enough to navigate through?
Perhaps, but IMHO "en å" isn't necessarily navigable. The size of "en å" may vary locally.
Native speaker / former course contributor chiming in: the TTS is definitely screwing this up. I'll make a re-recording in a while and post it in the comments.
but there's a big TTS hiccup. It just sounds very unnatural. almost like 2 different "voice takes" were spliced together (obviously, that's not how tts works, but as a comparison/analogy)
phrases like this make swedish the most concise language i ve stumbled upon, more concise than even english
In English, to be technically accurate, a creek flows into the sea and a stream doesn't, though in Australia most people call all streams creeks wherever they flow.
Re-recording
The voice is not quite perfect on this sentence, as of April 14th, 2018, so I've taken the liberty of re-recording it.
I think this sentence is probably hard to hear normally, so with the voice meshing the vowels, the difficulty level goes even higher. :) I have made two recordings in a single file: the first is a little clearer, with the och fully pronounced, and the second which follows immediately is closer to how most natives would say it.
Please find a correct recording on http://duolingo.vydea.io/71a89a335b044dcf9959aa7b72061aed.mp3
For more info on re-recordings, please check the info thread: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/23723515
Thanks for listening. Ha en bra dag! :)
That is one of the most adorable landscapes I've ever seen. Imagine being there during summer, playing in the water and then climbing on that island to sunbathe. ^_^
yeah, including all the country mosquitoes :) The forests are full of mosquitoes. I was innocent once, until I sat down to rest in a forest. And to my wonder, my light coloured clothes changed to black. I still have PTSD :P
