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- "Is he eating lunch?"
"Is he eating lunch?"
Translation:Spiser han frokost?
11 Comments
How does this sentence translation differ from Does he eat lunch?
What I mean is, if I were a babysitter and I were to ask the parents, "Does he eat lunch?" Would it also directly translate to "Is he eating lunch?"
Because they are definitely two different questions.
They are the same question in Danish (as in they use the same words). If you wanted to ask "Is he eating lunch?" then you could add in some sort of time element (e.g. Spiser han frokost lige nu - Is he eating lunch right now?), I think using the continuous constructions here (e.g. Er han ved at spise frokost/Er han i gang med at spiser frokost? - Is he eating lunch?) would be a bit much because to me that would be more long term things you'd use it with, you could also say "Sidder han og spiser frokost?" (Is he sitting and eating lunch?) but whether a Dane would actually say that, I'm not too sure about again (and all of this is covered in a later lesson, I don't think we've added it in this early in the tree just so people don't get confused)
Xneb, I get Spiser han frokost? But, even though a bit wordy, shouldn't Er han spiser frokost be correct? It places emphasis on the eating part, right?
1567
I could be wrong, but I don't think you can put 'er' along with 'spiser' in this way. They're both verbs, and you don't use them both together like that (unlike in English).
I as a german have a hard time to see any difference between those two questions. I see it now but in german you would need a longer sentence to make clear which of the two you mean.
- 1567
because the verb here is 'spiser' not 'er' (to be). The verb (spiser/eat) is already conjugated.
