"Do you have strings?"
Translation:Har ni snören?
22 Comments
766
shouldn't most ett- words remain the same in plural form, and only take an "n" at the end when it is definitive plural? Why is it "snören" instead of "snöre" here?
It's ett-words ending in a consonant that virtually always stay the same in the plural. :)
So there is never a distinction between the definite and indefinite plural of snöre?
There is. According to my notes, this is the so-called "fourth declension" in Swedish: ett-words ending in a vowel. The indefinite plural form adds an "-n" (snören), while the definite plural form adds "-na" (snörena). They occur much less frequently in the lessons than ett-words ending in consonants (the "fifth declension"), which are unchanged in indefinite plural, but add "-en" in definite plural form. As a result, I still forget about this distinction :-)
what about this answer: "har du/ni några snören?", like in "Do you have any ...?"
When would this be used? Strings as a plural is uncommon unless used for instruments. Even if you wanted several pieces of string, you would still say 'do you have (any) string'
I think it depends heavily on context. You might not ask someone randomly if they had "strings", but perhaps you are discussing a craft project which clearly calls for multiple types of string, instead of one long string to be cut into multiple pieces.
I don't understand what this sentence means. Can somebody explain the context and what kind of strings we are talking about?
I'm quite surprised too, that they're talking bout strings all the time. But maybe Duolingo want to stress that Swedish are just a mighty nation of melodic death metal and they just break their strings quite often so they ask this kind of questions instead of "have you seen my wallet/keyes/cell/glasses"?
That's a sträng, and the default is snöre, which is the "twine" sense of "string". :)
There honestly isn't really a single good translation of that. We don't have the phrase in the same way English does. So it depends on the context, and we usually phrase it a bit more directly.
Tråd was not accepted as an answer which means a string or a thread. Without a context this is a bit ambiguous.
- 897
Since it's strings, it would have to be trådar, but that should be accepted.
Please see the above discussion. Different rules apply because snöre is an ett-word ending in a vowel.
