13 Comments
882
det does not refer to the keys, it is an empty word referring to 'the thing I am talking about' and it does not change for gender or number. We usually compare it to 'it' in 'It is raining'.
- 882
I just wrote a longer post about this here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9708920
- 882
Apart from what I just wrote in answer to kathryn.ne, dem är mina nycklar is actually even worse. dem is an object form and can never be used as a subject in a sentence at all. (since de and dem are pronounced the same way, many Swedes struggle with this, so it is a pretty frequently made error, but it's still considered wrong).
- 882
We normally don't say the t in det in everyday speech.
There's a clear difference between the /i/ sound and the /y/ sound, but the /y/ sound is usually hard for learners to pick up, so just keep listening and you'll hear the difference eventually.
- 327
I typed in "These are my keys", only to be told it has to be "Those are my keys."
- 882
Quite right. det can mean 'it' or 'that' – and in sentences like this, where you don't say 'It's my keys' in English – 'they' or 'those'. For 'these are my keys', we would have said det här or detta.
'that' is the singular form of 'those'. Because you have plural keys, it would be 'those are my keys'.
If you only had one key, it would be 'That is my key'
