"På restaurangen sitter barnens mödrar och fäder."
Translation:At the restaurant, the children's mothers and fathers are sitting.
53 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
If you said the translated version in America people would understand you, but it would sound Very odd. "The children's mothers and fathers are sitting in the restaurant." makes much more sense. Being lazy we'd even more likely say, "The kids' parents are in the restaurant.", but that's not the best way to learn the Swedish words for mothers and fathers. :-)
We accept both of those options and many others as well. But like I wrote above, this is one of those sentence where the default needs to be unidiomatic for the sake of the reverse translation option.
The default is perfectly grammatical if you add a comma, though. "At the restaurant, ... are sitting". I'll see to that it's added.
Yes, it's really awkward in English and not natural at all to have the parts of the sentence in that order. But, it' Swedish that I'm learning so I'll go along with it. I have two questions: 1 - is this normal, in Swedish, to start the sentence/thought with the location? 2 - how would you invert this sentence to make a question? Tack!
To be fair, Barnens mammor och pappor sitter på restaurangen would be the most natural construction in Swedish as well. But you may encounter this construction as well. I'd say it sounds the most natural in certain contexts, like a narrative - in which case it works for English as well.
As for making it a question, I'd go with Sitter barnens mammor och pappor på restaurangen?
167
This is called the locative inversion: At the restaurant are sitting the children's mothers and fathers. Duo does not accept it...
980
Took me about 20 minutes just now digging through grammar books to finally wrap my head around this one.
My instinct said "childrens' mothers and..." but after much deliberation, I came to find out that in order to make children (which is already plural) possessive, you tack on the 's.
If, for example, this were "girls' mothers and..." you would add s' because the plural of girl (girls) ends with an s, whereas children does not.
You learn something new every day, even about your own language... :)
I've tried "At the restaurant the mothers and fathers of the children are sitting" and it's not accepted. Neither was "The fathers and mothers of the children sit in the restaurant". Can't see why, it seems to me the sentence' construction has been made unnecessarily complicated for the sole reason of teaching us a Swedish sentence.
483
I think your first suggestion should be accepted. As for the second, you have said "fathers and mothers" instead of "mothers and fathers", which in my opinion is enough to disqualify the suggestion.
969
At the restaurant, the mothers and fathers of the children sit. This is also a correct translation, or is something wrong with it?
980
Sounds good to my ear. It's perhaps expressed a little differently, but the meaning is the same.
38
It's mostly due to the structure of the English sentence. While it is more usual to say "the children's parents are sitting at the restaurant", you could just as well say "at the restaurant, the children's parents are sitting" just for emphasis. It works for the Swedish sentence the same way, so you could as well say "barnens mädrar och fäder sittar på restaurangen." Hope this helps!
2813
For some reason, " kids' " is 'almost correct' here, and the correct one is " kids "... silly Duolingo.
1371
I'm restoring this skill, so i have a question from the future. Based on the continuous form, can this sentence mean "The children's mothers and fathers are at the restaurant"?
980
This sentence doesn't say that they are inside the restaurant. They are sitting at the restaurant, which, I think, is a perfectly valid thing to say. Especially since it is not stated whether it is in or outside.
You are right, though, in that if they are inside, you would likely say 'in the restaurant.'
12
The children's mother and father are sitting in the restaurant. Subject object. Same meaning. Perfect English but marked as incorrect.
483
Your sentence is incorrect because it has singular "mother" and "father". But the Swedish we are given has plural for both those words.
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Once again this is bad English. Think of it from the point of view of a Swedish person trying to learn how to speak English. If they spoke the literal translation to an ordinary English speaker, a born and bred English speaker would be scratching their head to understand what they meant before telling them the correct way to say what they meant.