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- Topic: Swedish >
- "I sleep there."
"I sleep there."
Translation:Där sover jag.
13 Comments
What's the difference between "där sover jag" and "jag sover där" if both are valid word orders?
Dar sover jag - There , I sleep ( you emphasise the adverb more ) Jag sover dar - I sleep there
Hope this helps, that's what I understood from watching other discussions, but feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Why wouldn't "Jag sover där" work? I know this is probably a stupid question, but it seems backwards.
1459
We actually don't. Instead, we're V2 – the verb goes in second place in the sentence (in main clauses). I wrote a long post about it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8970470
Interesting read but this sentence doesn't seem all too special, it isn't a subclause or anything it just seems like a normal sentence which should have the subject first, not the object.
- 1459
Not that it matters a whole lot in this case, but där isn't an object, it's a place adverbial. The thing is though, that in Swedish, the verb really has to go in second place (in main clauses). So once you put the adverbial first, the verb has to go right after that. There's no rule that says the subject should go first in Swedish. It often does, statistically speaking, but it's absolutely not necessary. If you start an English sentence with an adverbial, like, Tomorrow I will be there, you still prefer to have the subject before the verb. But in Swedish, we don't – it's more important to us to keep the verb in second place. This is the most basic rule of our word order.
Interesting. It's just I rarely see sentences with the subject after the verb, most of what I've seen so far on not just Duolingo but YouTube, Facebook, the Skype group chat I'm in, oftentimes has the subject at the beginning of a sentence, or just before the verb in general, and Wikipedia says that Swedish usually follows SVO word order, and I get that it's not always the case, as in English there are cases where the subject goes in third place, are there any rules regarding when to switch the order?
Also, off topic, but I've heard rumours of an expansion to the Swedish tree, is this true? And if so, is there a rough ETA?
- 1459
The distinction between SVO/SOV etc doesn't really fit the Germanic languages (English is an exception) but when people impose it anyway, we get this statistical fact that the subject most often comes first. But that's just how it usually is, not a rule. The V2 is a rule though, and it's pretty much inflexible. Whatever goes first in the sentence, the verb must go second.
The diagrams I link to in my long post about word order show pretty clearly how it works in general – those are the ground rules for what can go where, so to speak. The reason for what we choose to put first is how we want to structure information. For instance: when we say here, Där sover jag, we're saying something about place X. But if you had said Jag sover där, you would have said something about yourself. In English I might rephrase it to get the same effect: That is where I sleep vs I sleep there.
Other question: see the FAQ.
Interesting, see I would just use the same sentence but add emphasis to the word I wanted to...well...emphasise. Would that be as natural in Swedish? Simply emphasising the words themselves instead of altering the sentence?
Also I'm not sure which FAQ to view, they are all about <1 year out of date.
