47 Comments
America is indeed big. Especially considering it consists of two continents and dozens of Spanish speaking countries (and one Portuguese speaking :-)
Yes, best referred to as "the Americas," i.e., the Western Hemisphere, which helps remove confusion.
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Unfortunately we don't seem to be able to say "Amerikorna" in Swedish, I've never heard it or seen it in contemporary literature (it can be found in old texts). So we say Nord- och Sydamerika for that.
Then I should rephrase: "best referred to" -- in English -- "as the Americas" when referring to the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps other languages could use "Western Hemisphere" when not specifically referring to the USA or North / South America and we want to avoid confusion. I am a tech writer. Confusion = Bad!
But this started with stort. Big enough. On arriving in the US, friends from Tyskland rented a car for a week on the East Coast thinking to tour New York, Chicago, the Alamo (in Texas), Grand Canyon and California. Can't be done of course. ;-)
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No, I understood what you meant, I just wanted to relate to Swedish usage. I wish we could do the same in Swedish.
LOL! I am SO delighted by learning the Swedish words that English does not have. Thanks for all your wonderful explanations.
Continents, countries, provinces, cities and villages are all ett-words. It holds also for e.g. Nederländerna, which is plural, and Västerbotten, where botten is an n-word.
I take it Amerika means The United States of America, and not the broader continent?
- 1767
No, the primary meaning is the double-continent: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika
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This isn't really the case. When a Swede talks about 'Amerika' or 'amerikaner' s/he is pretty much always refering to the country, not the two continents. Unless it's made clear by context, one would say 'Nord- och Sydamerika'. Yeah it's a bit of a mouthful, but it's not used that often.
USA isn't really thát big (it looks bigger because of mapping techniques, just like russia) So I assume the continent
yeah but still it's a lot smaller than we think http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-true-size-of-africa/ Here a map of it compared with africa
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No, but by that logic, we could just compare it to the size of the sun, and say "the USA is actually tiny", so it's not very useful for what we're talking about here. It makes far more sense, when talking about whether something is large or small, to talk about that thing relative to other things of its kind. Countries compared to countries, continents to continents, apples to apples.
I think it´s about time they adopt a proper name for their country, perhaps Usonia or something nicer
I assume this only for geographical size? How would you say America is great/awesome?
I can imagine the answer but I would prefer someone to confirm: when you say "Amerika" in Swedish you mean the continent but people usually use the word to talk about USA? Or they always say USA?
At least in Norwegian, "Amerika" usually means the country, while the continents would be called "Nord-Amerika" and "Latin-Amerika" or "Sør-Amerika". USA is also used for the country, though.
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I was just in Sweden a couple weeks ago, and it seemed to me Swedes would say "the US", at least when speaking in English. Maybe they say something else in Swedish.
I feel "America" meaning United States is a typical thing of who lives in the US, no matter the language. At least I notice how Brazilian immigrants say that even in Portuguese and this sounds a little unnatural in the context of Brazilians who live in Brazil.
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The same with most Mexicans who live in Mexico, and Peruvians who live in Peru and Costa Ricans, etc. Although there is somewhat of a push to differentiate by using los estados unidos and estadounidenses. North American, Central American and South America tend to be used for the continents and the Isthmus of Panama. While this is technically wrong, it's such an ingrained usage that I'm betting it doesn't get changed except by people with bees in their bonnets about how selfish we are to refer to one country as America.
In Canada it's more common for us to refer to the USA as "the US" or "the States" rather than "America." Of course a lot of people still say "America" and we don't consider that to be wrong or anything, but it's just more common for us to say "the US" or "the States" (at least in BC, Alberta, and NB, which are the provinces I've lived in).
I've noticed that we're more likely to say "America" when we're talking about ideology or culture (usually in the context of how we differ) or the concept of America as a nation, but when we're talking about locations or current events we tend to say "the US" or "the States."
But that's not a rule or anything, it's just a common pattern.
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Why not Amerika är stort to be translated America is great like Storbritanien means Great Britain'
I inderstand your question. But I want to point out thay Great Britain isn't technically Storbritannien. It is quite confusing, but Storbritannien in Swedish means the entire island of Great Britain and includes Northern Ireland, so translating Storbritannien into English you should use United Kingdom.
Great does mean big/large but isn't that now more in terms of names "great lakes" etc. Isn't great now used more to be a synonym of good/superb? Which isn't what the translation into Swedish is after.
But that said, I don't know how duolingo works with preferred translations etc, so it's up to a mod to decide if great should be accepted. :)
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So how in Swedish one translates to a greater degree. Is there a way to say in Swedish the recently popular slogan Make America great again.
Greater in that context would be "större" (I en större grad). But being Swedish native I might be missing something on the English part. But as great has switched slightly to be more "superb", greater is still only "larger" and not "more superb"?
Translating that sentence isn't easy. But I would suppose it would would be more like " Make America good again" ("Gör Amerika bra igen"). Because it wouldn't make sense to state "Make America big again" ("Gör America stort igen").
But as great has that dual meaning in English it is not easy to translate directly.
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Thanks. That what I suspected that greatness is somehow not easy to translate in Swedish (also as a noun?). Alexander the Great is though translated Alexander den store, isn't it?
Correct, Alexander the Great would be "Alexander den store".
Greatness would be "storhet" according to Google translate. Not a word I use a lot. :)
The word great has a multitude of meanings and these have Swedish translations, such as "meaningful", "important", and so on. To properly translate I think the meaning must be known. Or if it is a name you'd have to know the name.
Like Catherine the Great is "Katarina den stora" and all the other name examples mentioned earlier. :)
Did a quick check in a dictionary for great as a noun and those traslate only into people, for example "important person". Not sure if that is 100% true or just what that dictionary decided was correct. :)
Apparently not... stor probably comes from the root we share with stand (lots of mention of “stiff” too...) whereas stout seems to come more from the sense “brave, proud”. Huh.
Not related to sturdy or strong either. Very distantly to store, it appears.
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Curious to know who the hymn "How Great Thou Art" translates to Swedish.
According to Wikipedia it is originally in Swedish and has been translated to, amongst other languages, English.
The Swedish title is "O Store Gud". It uses some archaic Swedish but found the lyrics on https://sv.m.wikisource.org/wiki/O_store_Gud
