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- Topic: Swedish >
- "You read the newspapers."
"You read the newspapers."
Translation:Du läser tidningarna.
21 Comments
Why "ni"? Most frustrating thing is not explaining "why" behind anything.
Ni is the plural form of du, kind of like the Southern American English "you all" or "y'all." It is used when you are addressing multiple people. Ex: (if you were talking three friends) Har ni böcker (Do you have books?) It is ni here because you are talking to more than one person.
I'll just put this here:
I assumed tidning is cognate with English 'tidings'. In fact it is a very close anagram. Remeber thr song We Wish You A Merry Christmas has a line; 'Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin'. Good tidings or good NEWS. Newspapers.
Yup. A tiding was an announcement, originally, and news used to be announced orally. German, Danish, Dutch, etc. also have cognates.
Tid translates to time.
A lot of newspapers are called 'The Times' (as is one of the major newspapers in the UK) or 'The Sunday Times' or 'The [place name] Times'
Maybe that could help to make a connection for you?
When do you put -arna after the word? Because sometimes it's just -en and sometimes you put -or after the word, but i don't know what to use when. Can someone explain?
For tidning:
- -en is the singular definite suffix: tidningen = the newspaper
- -ar is the plural suffix: tidningar = newspapers
- -na is the plural definite suffix: tidningarna = the newspapers
The pattern depends largely on the verb's declination. This page has some more info on that: https://www.lysator.liu.se/language/Languages/Swedish/Grammar.html#nouns
Do most Swedes use "Du" or "Ni?" - I believe that Du is used with friends and family, while Ni is for people you don't know . Is that correct?
No, that's a common myth. You should use du when talking to one person, and ni when talking to more than one person. Swedish never used ni broadly as a formal pronoun, and you may even offend some older people if you use it, so while it does occur rarely, this is largely misinformed and not advisable.
It wont accept du or ni for me each time i select one it suggests the other... Very frustrating
1461
Did you get it as a multiple choice question? For those, you have to check all correct answers – so you'd have to choose both if they appeared together.
