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- "Det är inte sant att en häxa…
"Det är inte sant att en häxa måste vara gammal och ful."
Translation:It is not true that a witch must be old and ugly.
32 Comments
If you are visiting Sweden before Easter and bump into little witches, you should know that this has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Read about påskkärring here:
I want to thank you for covering words like goddess, witch, wizard,etc. I did Irish before moving on to Swedish and they weren't mentioned at all. Not very helpful for a witch like me. Thanks!!
If you're wondering about the translation of any other related words, feel free to ask in the Swedish forum. :)
Is en häxa specific in any way, or does it refer to all pagans, Wiccans, and magical women alike?
1343
It can be used for all kinds of witches. Pagans and Wiccans can be called paganer and wiccaner with Swedish pronunciation, although there are also words like hedningar and nyhedningar.
Is the word 'häxa' related to the word 'hex', as in something a witch may cast?
"Hex" is a relatively new word in English, which comes from German verb hexen, to do witchcraft. The German word for witch, Hexen share etymological roots with English "hag" and Swedish hagga. Swedish häxa, like English "hex", is a recent borrowing from German Hexen (less than 400 years ago, from my brief etymological inquery).
- 208
I said "It is untrue that a witch must be old and ugly" but it marked it wrong and corrected me saying "It is not true that a witch must be old and ugly" is the correct way, are these not both the same?
No, just as they're not the same in English. Same meaning doesn't mean same sentence.
It's in the singular, so it's "has to" - I'm assuming that's accepted. :)
:) )) Could be I've made that mistake. Thanks. Else, 'must' and 'has to' should be both acceptable, right.
Yeah, they're certainly not always interchangeable, but they're close enough here that there's no reason not to accept both, really.
I don't think "should" should be acceptable as a synonym of "must" here, although I know that English can occasionally use it in that way. The risk of confusing people is large enough already.
- 719
The word "should" implies that there are exceptions to the rule. Whereas "must" implies no exceptions.
Since it's just one witch, you need "has to" rather than "have to".
- 245
I wrote "It's" instead of "It is" and got marked wrong! The sentence was otherwise identical. Can I have my point back please? ;-/
I see you left an error report, which is great! It says:
It's not true that a witch must be be old and ugly
So the problem is that you wrote "be" twice by accident. :)
