"What are you doing this weekend?"
Translation:Vad gör du i helgen?
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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?"
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I can't see that this has been answered (or I'm not understanding the answer)...why "till helgen" rather then "i helgen"?
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
I would also like to know since as a native Russian speaker I can come up with only two prepositions: в which is like IN used for a specific day, and по used for a repeated day of the week or time of the day: in the mornings, on Sundays. Swedish has på, i and till which seem to change on me just as I've memorized the previous cases :)
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".
Prepositions ARE weirdly unpredictable, in all languages, it seems. You could perfectly well say 'on the weekend' (but not 'in the weekend'), 'over the weekend' (but not 'under the weekend'), 'this or that weekend', and not 'at the weekend');'during the weekend' is fine, and probably even 'for the weekend' but never 'to the weekend'. Why do some of them work, and not the others? Who know? Some just sound right, because we've heard them frequently, and that must be because we tolerate more variation for prepositions than for other parts of speech.
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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".
veckoslut is only rarely used in Sweden. It's common in Finland, but Finland Swedish isn't taught in the course.
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It still shouldn't be taken as an error. Even if it is rarely used in Sweden, it is not wrong. Every Swede will surely understand it.
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Thanks! I was wondering why veckoslut suddenly wasn't accepted even though that's the word I learned in school, but yes, we were mostly taught the Swedish spoken in Finland.
Just idiomatics - it's a much more common way to express "this weekend", whether past or present.
"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.
Why is vecka not involved? (I know - nobody knows, that's the way it it.) Language is so wonderful!!!
helg is related to "holy", so a helgdag was a holy day. It gradually came to mean a day on which you don't work.
There is also veckoslut, but it's not common at all in Sweden Swedish.
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I am together with native swedish speaker and he is telling this is really s*hit translation. Never ever nobody says that... fix it. Vad gör du i helgen. Should it be.
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Why do you use till? I thought it meant untill or something similar so can someone please explain? tack xx
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Why isn't "veckoslut" accepted for "weekend", although that is the literal translation for "weekend". "Helg" means literally "holiday".
