- Forum >
- Topic: Swedish >
- "Det är en tidning."
41 Comments
65
I hear "Dear" are en tidning. I turned it up amd listened over an over and I still hear it as dear are..
1495
Det does not refer to the newspaper in this sentence. It is a placeholder pronoun much like it in It is raining. Much longer post about this here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9708920
1495
Just as it should be. Det in this sentence means it, but if you stress it a little more, it can also mean that.
this would be det här or detta.
1495
Det här är en tidning or Detta är en tidning (more formal)
it can be den or det depending on gender.
För mig som har pluggade svenska för över 6 år det rätt ordet är DEN. This seems wrong, since when you're using en words then it is DEN instead of det. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I've been taught over the past 6 years in school. Futhermore, in the spoken slowmotion sentence the voice says DEN. In spoken language these -n and -t sounds are being mostly silent.
1495
Yes, it really needs to be det here. I wrote a long post about it here which hopefully explains it: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9708920
1495
It is can be shortened to it's with an apostrophe, but its only means 'belonging to it', like in The newspaper lost its credibility for instance.
1495
Really, there's a difference in meaning between 'this' and 'that', and we can and do express that difference in Swedish too. this is 'det här' or 'detta' and that is 'det där' or sometimes 'det'.
1495
tidning isn't neuter, it's common gender, so that it's en tidning, tidningen.
The Swedish genders aren't masculine/feminine, we just have two grammatical genders, neuter and common gender.
1495
There isn't much sense behind the genders. Historically, it's called common gender because we used to have three genders, feminine, masculine and neuter, and the first two melted together into common gender. There are some tendencies, for instance words with the ending -ing are typically en words. (except the word ett ting 'a thing', where -ing isn't an ending).
Some more about these tendencies here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6329293