"Have you lost your memory?"
Translation:Har du tappat minnet?
10 Comments
When you say a phrase in this construction relating to something on your body, you don't use a possessive adjective (min, din, sin, etc.). Instead, you make the object in the definite form. Ex: Har du ont i ryggen? -- Does your back hurt? or Skadade du benet? -- Did you hurt your leg?
859
Super-Svensk is right. Read more about body parts in Swedish here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6094128
- 1393
In an exercise a number of days ago I used tappar for to lose and it was incorrect. In the discussion forum I was told that tappar is only used when its something you can drop and that I should have used förlora. Can you clarify?
- 859
We often use tappar for 'lose' when it means 'lose' as in 'accidentally drop'. For instance we have sentences like Har du tappat passet? 'Have you lost your passport?'. We also say tappa bort which is an unambiguous way of saying this.
For more abstract things though, like Han har förlorat synen 'He has lost his eyesight', you usually have to use förlora for the reason you mentioned. That's more of a rule of thumb though, you can tappa minnet and also tappa humöret 'lose your temper' and a few more. We should probably say that you can only be sure that you can use tappa if it's about things one can drop, but for others you'll have to learn for each word whether it works or not.
Also for losing games, friends etc, tappa generally doesn't fit.
So it would be a correct translation to say "har du förlorat minnet"?
- 859
You can use the possessive in most cases, it's just less idiomatic, but with minne I think it sounds too weird. It makes it sound like it's just the one countable memory too.
