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Maybe I'm missing some idiomatic translation here, but doesn't this also translate to "The children play in fifteen minutes."? As in... the children's play time begins in fifteen minutes.
No. For that meaning, Swedish uses om.
Barnen leker om en kvart = The children will be playing in fifteen minutes.
Prepositions are so confusing. It's the only thing so far that I dislike about Swedish.
Yes, and half the problem seems to be that the English prepositions are strange.
so if I want to say "I haven't seen you in five years" should I say "jag har inte sett dig i fem år"?
If am not wrong (still learning Swedish), it has to be "Jag har inte sett dig på fem år."
On my grammar pages to distinguish between "på" and "i", it is written that 'på' is used in following cases "Hur länge har man inte gjort något?", "Hur länge ska man inte göra något?"
I am hopping that helps you.
thank you very much. Can I ask which grammar pages or websites do you use to learn Swedish other than Duolingo? I've just moved to Sweden and I'm in the process of learning the language.
In one discussion I found a link to a grammar pdf (do not have the link anymore). Please have a look in the threads that are sticked on top in the discussion section. There they have collected a lot of helpful information.
Are you taking SFI lessons?
Thanks, I will check them out. No, actually I started these courses in high school because I was under 18, and they made retake middle school classes as well even though I have an 11th-grade certificate. Are you taking SFI lessons?
869
Thanks for pointing this out. Link to a native speaker saying it: http://sv.forvo.com/search-sv/kvart/
In Swedish, it's a quarter of an hour. In English it's a quarter of anything. Some common ones are a quarter of a dollar, a quarter of an hour, and a quarter of a year. The English unit quart is always a quarter of a gallon, like kvart is always a quarter of an hour.
I thought "i" with time is translated with "since".: "The children are playing since 15 minutes"...
You wouldn't say it like that in English. Two good English sentences would be: "The children have been playing since 15 minutes ago" and "The children have been playing for 15 minutes".
- 869
på with time expressions like this is used for accomplishing things. So it makes sense to say you read an article på en kvart or that the kids, say, built a snowman or made a sand castle på en kvart. But leka doesn't have any kind of result in it, so it doesn't make sense together with a time expression like that.
But where is the difference between "i" and "på" regarding time periods. One teacher told me that "på" is used in combination with negation, like: "Vi har inte sett på länge."
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The negation doesn't change it per se. Jag kan inte läsa artikeln på en kvart 'I can't read the article in 15 minutes' or Jag vill inte hålla på med det här i en kvart 'I don't want to be doing this for 15 minutes'.
There are lots of different time expressions and there are (at least) two dimensions to it. One is that i is used with some nouns and på with others. The other is that for nouns that can be used with both i and på, the meaning changes depending on which preposition you use.
inte på länge (you have a typo in your sentence, it should say Vi har inte setts på länge 'We haven't seen each other in a long time') is a sort of set expression which usually appears with a negation, this was probably what your teacher was telling you.
länge is never used with the preposition i.
Tack så mycket för förklaringen men... ;-)
Are there any kind of rules to know where to use i, på or where both are possible? Which one is more often used (to increase the probability to use the correct one)?
Barnen har lekt i en kvart, so you only need to change the tense. :)
You know how English has a word for "sixty minutes" - "hour", that is.
Now, if you want to say that the children play for sixty minutes, you say "for an hour", not just "for hour".
It's the same in Swedish but Swedish also uses kvart for "fifteen minutes" in the same way that we use timme for "sixty minutes". So then you need the article because the amount has been turned into a noun.
