"Om du var vaken skulle jag ge dig mat."
Translation:If you were awake I would give you food.
26 Comments
829
This sentence is sort of making fun of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX2ccZ1Dmu0
Ha! I had translated that song as part of my own studying. It's a beautiful love song, and the singing is very easy to understand.
My gut doesn't sit right with "If you were awake I would give you food". I put "If you were awake I would have given you food", which was wrong. The first sentence doesn't even sound like a valid alternative.
As a native English speaker, "If you were awake (then) I'd give you food" with the contracted form of "I had" and an optional then is normal and fairly common.
But in written form I'd definitely include the "then".
Of course, "I would have given" works too but that would translate to "skulle jag ha gett dig", I believe.
As a native speaker who enjoys writing concisely I would remove then as superfluous.
This sentence has brought a question to mind: I would have given would be in the past while I would give is in the present. The latter case I could see myself saying where I actively talking to a sleeping pet, but not after the moment had past. So I wonder if Swedish uses the present conditional where English uses the past perfect.
- 829
So I wonder if Swedish uses the present conditional where English uses the past perfect.
No, this sentence is strictly in the present in Swedish too. It can only mean 'if you were awake (now), I would be giving you food (now)'. The person is talking to someone who is asleep. I blame it on the song I linked to in the top comment.
Yes! That's what the issue is. I see this as an answer to, "why wasn't there anything to eat last night?"
- 829
Which it isn't, that one would be Om du hade varit vaken skulle jag ha gett dig mat 'If you'd been awake I would have given you food'.
It is okay to put a "då" before "skulle", right? I assume that that is done more in speech and less in writing?
- 829
If you want to add something, add så instead, that sounds natural. då doesn't really work here.
Can you say om du vore vaken or does "vore" only work in the main clause? Om du var här, vore jag glad. Correct?
I don't see why you couldn't use it like that: om du vore vaken skulle jag saga adjö.
What about:. When you are awake, I will feed you? Or is 'om' always used conditionally meaning 'if', ie 'in case', and not meaning 'when' , ie 'as soon as'? Or would I use 'när' in this second case? Linguistically I assume 'om' is related to 'when'
It would be: "När du är vaken, kommer jag mata dig". "Om" is indeed a word for if and not when. "Om" does not really have any correlation to "when".
Another way to look at it is that skulle means würde, so with var being the simple past, this is like using wäre in German.
- 528
Ok, if it were a question - if you were awake would i give you food? What would that be?
- 356
I think this one should read in English "If you were awake I would have given you food" The translation makes no sense to me in its present form (unless, as someone has already said, one is talking to someone who is asleep). I take it that Swedish has the method of saying "I would have given you food"?
No, the Swedish is actually also in the hypothetical present. I can't really see myself using this construction for the past tense. The reason it's so odd is because it's a play on a famous song, as linked to by Arnauti above. I'm not horribly fond of the sentence, it'd be better as e.g. "If you were awake, I'd give you a kiss" or something.
- 356
It seems you are still talking to someone who is asleep, but I think Sleeping Beauty would indeed prefer a wee peck to having a hamburger stuck in her mouth. I think that songwriters have over the years have been no respecters of language. To quote one a wee while ago "anything goes".
Yes, I keep complaining about "poetic license" on these forums, but those pesky lyricists do not appear to listen. :)
