31 Comments
693
A native English speaker would not say this exact sentence. In English, "come" is associated with "here," while "there" is associated with "go." There is a link in thought with a place towards the subject, or away from them, and both the verb and adverb consistently express this thought. Not so in Swedish, I see.
This is not English and should be changed. It is a failure in the aims of teaching a language if you are not actually using one. The verb "come" has a sense of towards and "go" a sense of away from, hence you cannot "come there."
There have been many occasions in earlier lessons where the English and Swedish sentences have looked completely dissimilar, and rightly so because of the differences between the two languages. So why not give the English translation as "Are you going there tonight" so that people learn the Swedish would use "kommer" with "dit" as well as "hit?"
This both fails to teach anything other than how to say something you would never say, and looks like a sloppy mistake by whoever set the lesson. My initial thought was that someone accidentally made a typo putting a "t" before "here".
But even with learning how to say an illogical sentence, that no one would ever use, in Swedish, that does not teach me that if I wanted to say I was "going there" I would need to use "kommer" rather than say "går."
The exercises are meant to teach, and that includes learning from mistakes. This sentence is failing to do that by giving a false translation.
- 382
I think it's really important to have good English in any translations. Swedish isn't available as a direct DL course from all languages (I tried to learn through Spanish as well as English), so many people come to it via English, and not via their first language. For these people, they might improve their English along the way - or they might learn phrases like this which are completely wrong!
As a native English speaker I see a phrase like this and I can almost ignore it as a DL thing. But for anyone who doesn't know English so well it's really not good at all. It could make their English worse, but they think it's fine because it's there in black and white on Duolingo.
I can see there's been a lot of discussion about this, but here's my take: "here" and "there" are relative in English. "Here" is where the speaker is. And in English you can go here or go there, but you can only come here. Towards the speaker is implied in the verb. Of course we can understand this translation, but to a native speaker it is not correct.
In short, "come there" is not possible because "come" implies towards the speaker and "there" implies away from them.
No native English speaker would ever think to give the "correct" translation. Come here, go there, go here -- but never "come there". A linguist could explain why, but any native speaker can tell you it's wrong.
That's why no one is criticizing the Swedish sentence, only the English "translation".
- 693
Good to know that. What's a possible scenario where you would use "coming there" instead of "going there?"
- 891
I think it's a difference in focus. We can say both Kommer du dit i kväll? and Går du dit i kväll? (Ska du gå dit i kväll? sounds even better, but that's a different story).
With the kommer version, the focus is on their showing up at the event. With the går version, the focus is on their going there, which incidentally also explains why we prefer to say Ska du gå… rather than Går du …, since the intentionality of that sentence works better with ska.
In English, I'd ask, "Are you going to be there tonight?" in order to emphasise arriving rather than going, so I recommend this as an acceptable translation.
- 891
That would not be wrong, though it would probably be translated more like Are you going to go there tonight? We would prefer to use ska when asking this, because it is usually the other person's intention one would ask about, rather than some kind of 'objective prediction', but it is still a perfectly correct sentence.
You simply say ”komma” instead of ”go”. You could say either ”Ska du dit i kväll?” or ”Kommer du dit i kväll?”
Is there the presumption that the questioner will attend with "kommer du dit" but not necessarily with "ska du dit"? The English translation above would make more sense if "with me" or "as well" was added on the end, so I wonder whether this is implied in the Swedish?
I feel will you get there tonight? should be accepted. Not completely sure, though.
I know, typos don't bother me but I was actually marked wrong for this. This was in a timed practice, otherwise I would have reported it. I may have missed an error but I'm pretty sure everything else was correct.
- 891
Sorry, I forgot that that topic doesn't mention the first bug which existed even before the typo bug in translations: in listen-and-type exercises, there is an older bug which prevents the machine from accepting any spelling variation at all. I should edit it. We reported the first one to Duo ages ago and have been reminding them periodically, but…
Correct English would be: Are you coming here tonight? OR Are you going there? You don's come there.
I tried "do you come there at night?", which was wrong, but now I'm curious - how would you write "do you come there at night"?
- 891
Depending on whether you mean night-night or evening-night: Kommer du dit på natten? or Kommer du dit på kvällen?
Why can i kväll translate to tonight if it more accurately means this evening?
- 113
I think that's because many English speakers use 'tonight' for the part of the day that first gets dark (say beginning about 6 pm), whereas Swedish (and other languages such as German) use the word for 'evening' for the part of the day between 6 pm and 11 pm, and the word for 'night' only later, beginning about 11 pm till dawn the next day. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)
- 891
Thank you, this is certainly correct about Swedish and it confirms my impression of how it is used in English.
Ah, okay. I was unaware that in Swedish it refers to everything up to 11. Either way, quite weird that "mitt i natten" means midnight/middle of the night if it's only 1 hour into what's "officially" considered night.
- 891
It's because people used to get up earlier and go to bed earlier in the old days. Just like middag sounds like 'middle of the day' (although the word isn't really used for that anymore) while 12 o'clock is in only really in the middle of the day for people who get up at 4 in the morning and go to bed at 20.
midnatt is still at 0.00 but mitt i natten has a much longer extension, probably more coinciding with 'the time when you expect to be soundly asleep'.
Can I just clarify? In Swedish is it correct to use kommer with dit? Or should it be går with dit and kommer with hit, as it is in English? If it is, I'm totally ok with that, because after all, Swedish is not English! Thank you :)
