"I find no work."
Translation:Jag hittar inget arbete.
18 Comments
I'm being told to use "inte något," but haven't yet been exposed to något. Could somebody elaborate?
835
Literally inte något means 'not any'.
inget means 'no', it negates nouns.
The word inte means 'not', it negates verbs.
Since we're negating the noun here (no work), the suggested answer is inget arbete. But if you insist on using inte, you need to have något too. 'any' can be a bit tricky in some cases in English, but if we just take an easy example, we get this:
han arbetar inte 'he does not work'
han har inga pengar 'he has no money'
han har inte några pengar 'he does not have any money'
I'm having real difficulty hearing the difference between "arbetar" and "arbete" - they essentially mean the same thing, yes - arbetar as a verb, (work - to do), and arbete) as a job?
arbetar is /ɑrbeːtɑr/ and arbete /ɑrbeːtε/. I think the difference is big enough.
- 281
Coming from German as a background language, I kind of expected "ingen" et al. to figure more prominently in Swedish, pretty much anywhere there is an indefinite noun in the object. I make no distinction that I'm aware of between "I find no work" and "I don't find any work" in English. Is there any perceptible difference in Swedish between "Jag hittar inget arbete" and "Jag hittar inte något arbete"? Is there any between the English versions for that matter?
