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- "På nittiotalet bodde jag i R…
"På nittiotalet bodde jag i Ryssland."
Translation:In the nineties, I lived in Russia.
27 Comments
Just clarifying, "In the 1990s" isn't one of the correct answers because technically this could be any "90s"? Or can you assume that it's the most recently past decade in constructions like this, rather than, say, the 1890s?
1360
Of course the sentence doesn't say which nineties, but without context, one would assume it would indeed be the 1990s, so I'll add that.
Is there a reason why it is "R"yssland? Thought it should be ryssland with a small r as all countries/languages have lowercase letter in Swedish.
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It's only languages. In Swedish, only names are written with uppercase. Russia is a name, Russian is not.
Is 'på' used in the sense of using 'in' as a more casual expression of saying 'during' here, as opposed to just 'i'?
Firstly, I'm unsure why the word order isn't this: "På nittiotalet jag bodde i Ryssland." Secondly, could it be re-arranged to "Jag bodde i Ryssland på nittiotalet"?
Tack!
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It's our old friend V2. In all main clauses that are not questions, the verb needs to go in second place. På nittiotalet is a time adverbial that fills the first place, so you absolutely need to have the verb right after that.
Your rearrangement works fine, it just changes the information structure.
Thanks Arnauti, I do recall seeing your explanation to a similar question in a previous lesson but my understanding (of both swedish and general sentence structure) wasn't good enough to understand it at the time. So thanks for repeating. Now I feel I am ready to conquer this hurdle!
- 1360
You'll get the hang of it!
V2 is a good rule in that it has virtually no exceptions (the word kanske is the only one we've found so far in the course, and that is probably because kanske was historically kan ske 'can happen').
Sorry but I have another question about this.... How do you know that this isn't a question then? meaning 'in the 90's did i live in russia?' I know that particular question seems stupid to ask, but if you swap 'jag' for 'du' it could be very confusing....
In the 90's did you live in Russia? = På nittiotalet bodde du i Ryssland? = In the 90's you lived in Russia
The only solution I can think of is that either a) it's dependent on the tone, or b) perhaps if it's a question the 'På nittiotalet' HAS to go at the end of the sentence?
Tack!
- 1360
Normal questions are created by putting the verb before the subject, and the only thing that can go before the verb in a 'real' question is a question word, like e.g. När 'When'. So yes, if you have an adverbial first, you already know it's not a normal question.
Second, it's also possible to create questions in Swedish without changing word order, just by using intonation, and then På 90-talet bodde du i R.? could be a question. But, then it ought to be translated into an English question with statement word order too, so it would be In the 90s you lived in R? rather than In the 90s did you live…?, since in that one you have question word order from 'did you live'. So the English question construction with 'did you X' is a little more versatile with regards to word order.
Ah ok, so both of my 'solutions' were kind of correct. I'll try to stick to saying the verb first then. Tack for the fast and detailed response :)
Edit: Just wanted to say that i am a native Swede, so my grip on the language is pretty strong.
The first word order you suggest doesn't work, if i were to translate how it sounds to a native speaker it would be something like "In the nineties I live in Russia", you would be understood, but it isn't very correct. To answer the second question, yes, you can without issues say the second wording.
Is "bodde jag pa Ryssland" incorrect? When do you use pa and when do you use i in relation to geography?
That would be incorrect. På is used for islands and other things that you are physically on, e.g. på ön= on the island, på stranden= on the beach, på berget= on the mountain. For islands that are countries, however, i is used. e.g. i Australien = in Australia.
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Nope, you'll have to write the full word in Swedish, because that's what we're trying to teach you here!
