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- "The little boy"
"The little boy"
Translation:Den lille pojken
20 Comments
This is very confusing. Here you are saying "the" twice, the little the boy! But in "restaurangens personal" the equivalent translation "restaurangens personalen" is wrong because that would mean "the restaurant's the staff".
Why do we have a double "the" here for this sentence, but not elsewhere?
1053
Late answer but this was a good question. As a general rule, Swedish has what is called double definiteness. Actually it could just as well be called triple, because the adjective also shows that the noun is definite:
'the red book' is den röda boken
The front article den, the ending on röd, and the ending on bok all show that the noun is definite.
After possessive pronouns and nouns in the genitive though, the noun isn't definite.
min bok 'my book'
hundens svans 'the dog's tail'
The possessive pronoun or noun in the genitive are by themselves enough to show that the noun is definite.
Liten is an irregular adjective. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liten#Declension for its declension.
Not in meaning, but in usage. See the table here for the irregular adjective "liten": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liten#Swedish
2264
It is, but you have to use the definite article as well when you introduce an adjective. Another example:
- the house = huset
- the small house = det lilla huset
- the yellow house = det gula huset
- etc
1053
lille is an optional form that you can use only for masculine nouns. It's also correct to say den lilla pojken.
432
As far as I understand a masculine noun in Swedish is a noun for a masculine person; all other en-nouns are just en-nouns. So you say "den lille pojken" and "den lilla flickan".
629
Liten is the singular form. When you use the definite article "den", you have to use the plural form.