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- "The little boy"
"The little boy"
Translation:Den lille pojken
31 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?
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.
1029
The definite form of an adjective is the same as the plural form for almost all adjectives. So it is den röda boken, röda böcker and de röda böckerna (the red book, red books and the red books).
interestingly, one can find this across several Germanic languages:
rood: het rode boek. rot: das rote Buch. röd: den röda boken. rød: den røde bog.
in definitive form, the plural of the adjective is used.
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
i thought it should be lilla in definite form? why is it lille? is it just because it is an irregular adjective?
lille is an optional form that you can use only for masculine nouns. It's also correct to say den lilla pojken.
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
But isn't there no such thing as a masculine noun in Swedish? In some languages, boys and girls are neuter, not masculine or feminine, so how would you know which one "pojke" is? I only know that it's gendered.
- 1029
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".
Liten is the singular form. When you use the definite article "den", you have to use the plural form.
- 575
there are dozens examples of this kind, den lång kvinnan, den orange apelsinen, I don't get why it does not work for the _ boy too
You shall also check that it is lille when for masculine and lilla for feminine
