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- "What are you doing this week…
"What are you doing this weekend?"
Translation:Vad gör du till helgen?
52 Comments
I wonder why would it be "i helgen" but not "i helg", since in the english sentence the word "weekend" is not in definite form?
It’s just that Swedish uses the definite form here while English doesn’t. Sometimes there is not a 1:1 overlap.
but why is it definite while the other examples are indefinite? like i dag, i natt, i kväll
In Swedish, abstract nouns and days (måndag [Monday], tisdag [Tuesday], sjukdom [illness], etc) often take the definite declension in a sentence, whereas in English we would normally not use a definite article.
For example: "På fredagarna går vi till Finland" translates to "On Friday's we go to Finland."
Whereas,
"Vi går till Norge i kväll" translates to "We are going to Norway tonight."
It simply comes down to memorizing where certain articles (definite or indefinite) are and are not used in Swedish versus English. Hope this helps!
But we would actually say "this weekend" or "for the weekend", so it's used as if it was a definite form. We would never say "What are you doing on weekend?"
According to my notes, you can use på for generalizations (days of week, times of day, and seasons) and also a future specific day of the week. Maybe other time-related things, but this is all I've learned so far :)
For example: på onsdag = on Wednesday (upcoming), på onsdagar = on Wednesdays (generally), på morgonen = in the morning (generally).
Don't try to figure out the logic, I think there is none; you simply need to memorize each case.
How does it work in Russian? Probably not the best place to ask this question, but it may be an interesting read for those who are curious about it :D
What can I say. Prepositions are weird. Why do we say "OVER the weekend" in English? We just do.
And in Swedish they say "på" for days of the week but not for "helgen".
It's probably more common - in English - to say this weekend (ex. What are you doing this weekend?)
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Yeah, but for some reason, in past tense, we tend to say "over." What did you do over the weekend? Especially early in the week.
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Although, literally that would be "Vad ska du göra i helgen" and has a slightly different nuance to it:
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"Vad [gör] du | What [are] you doing" sounds like a bit more definite plans of action than;
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"Vad [ska] du göra | What are you [going to] do", which (to me at least) is closer to planning on maybe doing something, but will it actually get done remains to be seen.
That's how I've understood the latter. Please do correct me, people, if I've got it wrong (in any language, or in the meaning of it).
Generally speaking, till is "to" and tills is "until". But there's overlap, colloquial usage, and idiomatics coming into play as well. In this case, till helgen and similar phrases (e.g. till sommaren) is a fixed phrasing for "over the weekend".
Just idiomatics - it's a much more common way to express "this weekend", whether past or present.
veckoslut is only rarely used in Sweden. It's common in Finland, but Finland Swedish isn't taught in the course.
"Vad gör du till helgen" sounds like "what are you doing until weekend", not "in the weekend".
That's more typically expressed as tills helgen or fram till(s) helgen. This construction is idiomatic and very common in Swedish.
"På lördag är det helg" (previous exercise) , "Vad gör du till helgen" . I do not see the difference concerning "helg" and "helgen". The first sentence is wrong when I wrote "helgen" and the second one was wrong when I wrote"helg". Can someone explain ? Thanks;
I wonder why the task says you have to mark 2 answers when only one is correct and you get that frustrating mistake sound.
There's only one correct answer 99% of the time. I am personally not used to select two, to be honest ^^
Weekend in Swedish is VEKOSLUT and not helgen ! In swedish all sorts of free days are HELGEN !
"Veckoslut" is common in Finland Swedish, but not in the Swedish spoken in Sweden. Here, "helg" refers to the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) while a public holiday is "en helgdag".
However I think veckoslut should be accepted if the form was correct, it is Swedish anyway. It's the same if British English was not accepted but American or Australian English was.
That is true, but we accept different variations of English so that learners can use their own source language. We have neither the knowledge nor the resources to properly accept Finland Swedish, and since we regularly state that we teach Sweden Swedish explicitly, it wouldn't be very pedagogical to accept terms that aren't commonly used in Sweden.
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In Sweden they mostly use "weekend" for weekend. Correct swedish for weekend anyway is: "veckoslut". This is real swedish language also used in Finland. "Helg" comes from history ( holy) meaning Sunday and other "Holy days" like Christmas day etc
Since the overwhelming majority of Sweden says "helg" for weekend, that is "correct Swedish."
