20 Comments
I was wondering why would it not be alla because it's like all the food is that imply plurality?
866
It's a mass noun, just like in English – you'd say a lot of food rather than many foods (that would mean something else).
I wrote 'who eats all food' and I was wondering if I should put a 'the' before food as it seemed more right. The awnser was correct but sugested answer with 'the'. Can someone make it clear?
- 211
I think that would be Vem ät upp all mat. But "Who ate all the food" feels so much more natural that I keep making this mistake when I'm trying to go fast!
I suppose the context here could be that something keeps happening: "Someone always eats the food in the canteen before I get there! Well, who eats all the food?"
- 866
Close, the past tense is åt: Vem åt upp all mat?.
ät is the imperative form: Ät din gröt! 'Eat your porridge!'
I can't quite understand this sentence. Upp and all both seem to mean "all" to me, and since its "who ate all the food" shouldn't it be "maten" rather than "mat"? What am I missing here?
It's more like äta upp means to eat to completion, but it doesn't really say that you're eating all of the food - just that you're eating all of what you're eating. So if you add the all as well, it means that not only are you eating of all the available food - you're also eating until there's nothing left of anything.
Just standard definite vs indefinite in Swedish here, actually. If you say maten, you're talking about some food specifically. But if you say mat, you're just talking about whatever food you have in general, so to speak.
In practice, these can be pretty interchangeable for the most part.
Should "Who will eat all of the food?" be accepted? It makes more sense to me than the present tense translation.
I would be much more likely to interpret this sentence in Swedish as e.g. "Who's that guy, eating all of our food?" - so the present tense is better in English as well. I agree the translation gets clunky, though. Changing the default might be a good idea - how do you feel about "Who is eating all of the food?"
