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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Det tar en liten stund."
17 Comments
"Liten" is indefinite - "En liten hund" "Lille/lilla" is definite - "Den lille pojken/Den lilla flickan"
On a mouseover, all translations of a word will be given regardless of context. Thuse "tar" will show "take", "takes" and "am/are/is taking".
Dear Emil the verb....TA.....means take so the word tar should be ...takes or ....is taking
Sorry, but Swedish HAS NO GRAMMATICAL FUTURE, so the translation "It will take..." is at least just as good.
What gave you that idea? Of course Swedish has a "grammatical future"...
Before I studied in Uppsala (I'm here to brush-up the basics, I know Swedish pretty well) I was on a course with name Svenska för Utländska Studerande, as everybody else in this situtation. Then they told us that. And from I know about languages it seems true. "'Ska(ll)" is not a grammatical future tense. It's just a word signalling that it will perhaps be a future. So to say. Half of what I heard referred to future when I lived in Sweden (11 years) was in grammatical present. OK, I understand that it's not a clear-cut simple matter, but the fact is that lots what to the uniniciated looks like present in Swedish serves as future.
Ah, you meant a future tense. That's true, Swedish does not feature one. But that's not the same as having no grammatical future - we just indicate it through other means.
"It will take..." would be Det kommer att ta..., strictly speaking. It should not be accepted here.
lille is the indefinite singular.
The plural - both indefinite and definite - is små.
