"The flag of France has three colors."

Translation: Frankrikes flagga har tre färger.

[Rebkova]

Why could not it be "Frankrikes flaggan har ..."? Because it says the flag and defined form of flagga is flaggan.

[Zmrzlina]

You can never have a definite form after a possessor.

[Rakhelii]

So we can't say something like "den franska flaggan"?

[HelenCarlsson]

We can, but that would be "the French flag".

[Rakhelii]

Okay, great. Funny that Duolingo accepted "the French flag" as a possible translation into English for "Flaggan av Frankrike."

[Arnauti]

There can be no Swedish sentence saying flaggan av Frankrike since that is incorrect in Swedish.

[Rakhelii]

Ursäkta mig! I didn't mean to write "flaggan av Frankrike" -- I just had it in my mind from reading one of the previous posts.. I know one has to say "Frankrikes flagga." I'm sure my point got lost in the confusion, but I mean to say that I'm glad Duolingo accepts "the French flag" as a translation into English -- even though the literal translation would be "France's flag." "The French flag" is just more natural in English. :-)

[EllisCM]

Is there a reason why "Flaggan av Frankrike har tre farger" (missing umlauts of course) is not an acceptable answer? That is the way the sentence is provided.

[HelenCarlsson]

We simply don't use that construction in Swedish:
The king of Sweden - Sveriges kung
Youth of today - Dagens ungdom
etc.

[EllisCM]

Perhaps the English statement to be translated should read "France's flag has three colors."

[Zmrzlina]

That is an accepted translation when going from Swedish to English, but not the primary one.

[HelenCarlsson]

I see :), but wouldn't that sound like "Francis' flag?

[EllisCM]

I suppose it does sound weird when I think about it, but it's pretty normal in English to just add " 's " to a country's name to make it possessive. "The french flag..." would also be used. I only suggested it because it's more intuitive to translate to the same sentence structure.

[HelenCarlsson]

Absolutely. It's good that it is an accepted translation :).

[K.Odam]

Not for me. "Francis" rhymes with "hiss" with a short "i" and a definite "s". "France's" ends with a "z" after a sound possibly between short "e" and a short "ee".
It's clearer to me than the Swedish "e" versus "ä".
The woman's name "Frances" could be a bit harder to distinguish.

But, of course, other variants of "English" will differ.

[HelenCarlsson]

I am sure you are right. I'm lousy at z-sounds, since we don't have them in Swedish.

[albernegiraffe]

Only confusing if you have a friend named Francis... who has a flag :P

[Yerrick]

@Helen correct.

• France's = Francis
• Francis's = Francises (like, there's two people named that)

...at least pronunciation-wise.

[HelenCarlsson]

... and I just realized that it probably pronounced Francisis flag, right? I always forget about this extra s you add also to names that ends with an s :).

[french-eese]

Is Francis French too?

[Luscinda]

More Frances' flag.

@French-eese - yes. Francis the First of France - otherwise known as Francois 1er, which is so much easier.

[LuciaPirani]

Can we say "flaggan till Frankrike" or or is it only a Norwegian construct?

[Arnauti]

Doesn't work in Swedish, no.