"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. :-)
Certainly. This is one of the cases where the default English translation is off because it is necessary to aid the reverse translation exercise.
Which one and why? We appreciate criticism, but if you want us to address it, please be a bit more constructive.
Well in English it should be something like "the children's fathers and mothers are sitting at the restaurant". Or "at the restaurant sit the children's fathers and mothers".
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?
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This is called the locative inversion: At the restaurant are sitting the children's mothers and fathers. Duo does not accept it...
Hmm... "At the restaurant are sitting the children's mothers and fathers" is also correct, but is rejected.
Since children is the plural form, you write children’s in English and not childrens’.
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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... :)
Does "In the restaurant the mothers and fathers of the children are sitting" sound too awkward?
I think it does sound awkward, but not grammatically incorrect. It's not a translation I'd recommend though, so I hesitate to tell you to report it.
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.
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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.
It's possible that the first one is simply missing, but I think it's more likely that it's a bug. I remember a whole host of solutions being accepted here.
One of the developers mentioned further up that structural changes tend not to be accepted.
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At the restaurant, the mothers and fathers of the children sit. This is also a correct translation, or is something wrong with it?
No, that's fine. I'm adding it now. The sentence is a complete mess to administer, so I imagine it just got lost by accident. We now accept 533 translations into English here.
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Sounds good to my ear. It's perhaps expressed a little differently, but the meaning is the same.
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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!
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For some reason, " kids' " is 'almost correct' here, and the correct one is " kids "... silly Duolingo.
I've seen a few comments from the developers saying that it gets mixes up about apostrophes
Great example of V2 that isn't obvious when reading from an English point of view. Is this OVS? Could I also write:
"Barnens mödrar och fäder sitter på restaurangen." S: Barnens mödrar och fäder V: sitter O: på restaurangen
Yes, absolutely, though I do not know if it is accepted - since constructional rewrites tend to not be. As a real-world sentence, it is excellent. :)
Tried "At the restaurant the children's mothers and fathers are sitting. I always get that children's is wrong, even though I put children and the 's provided. What am I getting wrong?
You're not getting anything wrong - apart from a comma, which should be irrelevant, your translation is exactly as the default provided. You really should not be marked wrong.
...children's mothers and fathers I will wait for the day I would use this sentence in a real life conversation... are you kidding me?
I really don't find anything weird with this sentence whatsoever. Not likely to be said in practice in its entirety, sure, but "children's", "mothers and fathers", "in the restaurant", etc. are all perfectly common.
Sorry for the late reply - I missed this comment earlier. I would wager it's a bug, given my above conversation with SKlassen1. But it's hard to tell for certain unless you know the full sentence you used.
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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"?
It restructures the sentence a bit too much to accept, perhaps, but it's got all of the relevant parts right.
You don't use the preposition AT in English, it should definitely be IN. You could say, I'll meet you AT the restaurant but if we are focussing on the interior, then it is IN
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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.'
If AT is used in this context it would require a limited space to be designated, like at the door of the restaurant the children are playing. This is because an activity is taking place. One could say I'll meet you AT the restaurant, if that is all that is said
And the clauses are the wrong way around for my ear. I think it should be 'The children' s mothers and fathers are sitting either IN the restaurant or AT the door of the restaurant. Or simply outside of the restaurant. Cheers
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The children's mother and father are sitting in the restaurant. Subject object. Same meaning. Perfect English but marked as incorrect.
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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.
How can one tell if Barnens means 'the child's or the children's'? Please tell me