"In streets and squares"
Translation:På gator och torg
15 Comments
No, that sounds strange. Swedish wants i for things that you can actually be inside of.
Thanks! In English, streets (and squares) are something you can inside of, not just in the sense of a street meaning the space above it, but also in the sense of a street or streets being a geographical area, no different than a city or cities, for which Swedish uses i. It's less common in American dialects, but on vs in with regards to streets is a mess in general.
Is gatan/gator ever used to indicate a geographical area in that sense? If so, would på still be used?
Interesting! I had no idea the option of in or on was such an issue. :D
I guess streets can be used to mean a geographical area, but from my perspective it will be quite literally interpreted if you say you're on Hornsgatan.
Apparently Finnish uses "in" even more extensively, such as being "in an island". I've always found prepositions the trickiest part of learning Swedish (in my somewhat limited studies), because they don't translate directly across, as in this example. Same with French. There is much subtlety in the situations requiring one or another.
Indeed. Prepositions are highly irregular in languages, it's one of the great difficulties I've had with French and Dutch as well.
I don't know how good that rule is. You can be in a port but not in a square?
So torg is also the plural for square? Is that because its an "ett" word and so the singular and plural are the same?
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Exactly. That's how regular ett words that end in a consonant work. The ones that end in a vowel work like äpple: ett äpple, äpplet and plural äpplen, äpplena.
Roughly, "på" is on, "om" is about, and "i" is in. But sometimes a different preposition is used in different languages, so it's idiomatic as to which preposition to use in a given situation.
