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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Katten lekte med musen."
18 Comments
"Played"? Is this meant to be euphemistic, i.e., "toyed"? That is, played with as a predator plays with its prey. Or it "lekte" in this sentence meant in a genuine sense, that is, they had a good time together?
I've seen lots of posts online about unlikely animal friendships involving predator and prey animals.
http://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-animal-friendships-interspecies/ awwwwwwwwww :)
it's funny how cats play with mice and dogs eat cats in Duolingo... i'd always picture the opposite :P
1339
I'm sorry, but for playing Scrabble you'd have to say spelade. (this verb is used for games with rules). They might have played some pretend game though. :)
OK, OK, so how about a cat-mouse jam band? Cat on drums, mouse on piano. I don't really want to picture the alternative. ;)
Leka is used for other unstructured play like playing with a toy or playing on a playground or playing dress-up, right?
For games with rules that kids make up themselves, often as they go along, is that still spela even if the rules make no sense or kids are playing by their own set of rules?
When I was a kid we would "play Star Wars" together on the playground where we would each pretend to be a Star Wars character and would make up new adventures as we went along, so that would be spela because we were "playing a character" (even though it was improvised make-believe much like "playing house" is, because in this case we were pretending to be a specific character rather than a general role like "mother" or "customer" or "princess"? Is that the difference?)
And do you spelar sports?
Jag vet det här är en hel del frågor, tack så mycket för några svar! (Är detta korrekt?)
- 1339
The games with the kind of rules children think up themselves while playing are generally leka. Even a game like 'tag' is used that way, 'to play tag' is att leka tafatt. [there are two words spelled that way, but this one has the stress on the last syllable. The other word means 'awkward', 'inept' and has the stress on the first syllable].
Back in the ancient pre-Pokémon days, kids would play = leka tjuv och polis 'thief and cop' and similar games. For your playing Star Wars, I'd definitely say leka for the game itself, otherwise it would sound like a computer/TV game. I'd prefer leka for a character in that game too, because spela someone is more what actors do. Kids might just say är too, that's probably the most natural version. Also, 'to play house' is leka mamma, pappa, barn, and the kids playing it would just say they 'are' mom for instance.
With sports it's always spelar, like fotboll, bowling, curling.
Interesting, here in Poland we also have two different verbs for either playing without rules, like children, or playing some instrument, on your computer, or doing some sport.
I once came upon a cybernetics textbook illustrated with the interaction of system C (cat) and M (mouse), culminating with how to define the merging of C and M.
