"Beviset är att vi pratar om det."
Translation:The proof is that we are speaking about it.
24 Comments
This is a very odd sentence (in English, at least)... in what context would this be said in Swedish, if at all?
The English really needs to be "are speaking" and not "speak" in this case. I didn't understand the English at all until your explanation.
It's a subtle difference. The form "we are speaking about it" means we are talking about it actively, in the moment. The form "we speak about it" means we talk about it habitually, but it is not the topic at the moment. Using the latter form causes a disconnect in the sentence, because "it" is "the proof" that is actively being spoken about.
To clarify the difference, take the sentence "His face is juicy because he is eating watermelon". That makes sense. If I said "His face is juicy because he eats watermelon" it would be odd, because he would likely wash his face between the times he eats watermelon.
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I've changed the main sentence just because it was you who said this, but I must confess don't really understand your explanation.
The way I understand this sentence, the proof is not that we're speaking about it right now, the proof is that we often talk about it.
So I'd rather compare it to a sentence like His face is bloated because he eats watermelon – where he isn't eating watermelon right now, but he does it habitually, which has long-term effects on his face.
Contrary to what someone said, X is in fact a famous person, and the proof is that we talk about X a lot. The proof is not that we're discussing X right now.
It's actually a very natural sentence in French: "La preuve est qu'on en parle." / "La preuve, c'est qu'on en parle." (the latter is more common is spoken French).
Actually, this makes sense to me as a sentence, in the sense that if one wanted to say, "This event was not important," but if someone responds, "The fact we are even mentioning it is proof that it is," then this is relevant as a sentence. :)
What are we supposed to learn about Swedish from this sentence? Whatever that purpose is, can you course designers give us learners a completely different sentence that illustrates that purpose? I think this sentence is far too confusing because it either doesn't make sense to us or we would have to concoct some artificial situation in which to use the sentence. Tack!
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After seeing the discussion of ett bevis should be translated as "a piece of bevis", then I tried "the piece of evidence" for beviset here. Failed.
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Evidence and proof aren't quite the same thing, and I don't think "evidence" is a good translation here in the first place, and to make it definitely singular makes it fit even worse. Here's a link to a discussion about the difference between proof and evidence which I think clarifies it a bit: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=101209
Hopefully this is true in Sweden as opposed to U.S. Sometimes it seems the less we are sure, the more we speak. Or in the case of facebook, we repost without consideration to factfulness. (Yes, I'm plugging Hans Rosling's research)
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I get that bevis is an ett word that ends in a 't' in the singular definite and in an 'n' in the plural definite, but when would you use "beviset" vs "bevisen"? Does "beviset" translate to both "the proof" and "the single piece of evidence"? Since you would probably never say "the proofs", does "bevisen" always translate to "the [multiple pieces of] evidence"?
Yes, precisely - "proof" is countable in Swedish in the same way e.g. "furniture" is, but you can also treat it as a mass noun if you skip the article: Har du bevis för det?
Thank you from me, too!
And now I know that "möbel" follows the same pattern as "bevis" (althought möbel is an 'en word'). This is good, too!
:D
What's wrong with "the evidence is that we are talking about it"? Is "evidence" incorrect here?
