49 Comments
This really is a false friend for everyone who knows German, as kaka roughly translates as doo doo.
It's the same in French (spelled "caca" though). I wouldn't order chokladkaka in Sweden. Not really tempting...
Same in Finnish, kakka. And since Finland's second official language is Swedish, I often have to see that in cookie packages lol.
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It has two uses. One would be like in this sentence, just like any word – to mean 'a kind of, a sort, a type', literally.
The other use is as a filler word, much like English like. 'He was, like, about the same age as me'
We use the latter one a lot and it's getting less and less slangy and more and more just normal colloquial language.
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It's a genitive expression, just like a kind of in English, but we rarely use av for that kind of thing.
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In the English here, it is 'cookie' that gets the genitive treatment (of cookie) rather than 'kind'. So I'm tempted to write '... en kakas sort.' Does that have any meaning in Swedish?
No, you can't say "en kakas sort", it doesn't work. Stick to "en sorts..." or "en/ett slags..."
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Thank you, zmrzlina. As for jarretph, you are right of course. But notice that in the Swedish, it is 'sorts' that is modified into the genitive, not 'cookie'. But in the English, 'kind' is not similarly modified. Instead, 'cookie' gets modified to 'of cookie', which is rather like a genitive. So that was the reason for my question. (Compare 'the book of my father' and 'my father's book'. Similarly, compare 'a sort of cookie' to 'a cookie of sorts/a sort'.)
Ah ok. That kinda makes sense. I don't really know all the grammatical terms.
Not sure what you mean. In English we say "a kind of cookie" not "a cookie's kind".
Does the 'rts' in sorts sound like the english 'ch' in child? I once heard a native pronouncing the 'rds' in gårdshotellet similarly. Are there others?
When s has an r behind it, it usually takes the sh sound, yes even when separated by another consonant as in your examples.
So cookies and cakes are the same thing in Swedish? I got marked right for choosing cake!
Sort of. En kaka is the biscuit-y kind of cake, while en tårta is the more birthday cakey kind.
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There are two main types of "kaka" : "småkaka" which means "cookie" and "sockerkaka" or "mjuk kaka" which means "cake". When you use elaborate filling, icing, whipped cream and other decorations, you make it into a "tårta".
Ok I get it. In Canadian English though at least cake would always mean the birthday kind (tårta). There are of course different dialects so I understand why it was accepted.
Now that I think of it, both kaka and cake can of course also be the bready kind of cake. But yeah, I guess it's regional/dialectal what's cake.
British english is the same tårta is something You can slice and a biscuit is something hard flat and crunchy
Oh! So kaka isn't specific to cookies but biscuits (in a more general sense) rather. Is it?
How would you say "sort of/kind of" as in "A Jaffa Cake is sort of a cookie but it's really a cake"?
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Is kaka recognised as cake as well? I have heard people say chokladkaka for chocolate cake. Or do we assume cookie unless its specified?
There's a little overlap, so we accept cookie, cake, and biscuit - but generally, think cookie. :)
Kaka means "cake" in Swedish, like in chokladkaka or morotskaka. No cookies in these cases
That's not true. Cookies are kakor, too. The word covers a broader span in Swedish than in English.
Yes, that's correct.
- en sorts kaka = a kind of cookie
- sju sorters kakor = seven kinds of cookie(s)
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You noted that English can say either "kinds of cookie" or "kinds of cookies". What about Swedish? Is it only "kakor"?
No, you can use sorters kaka as well, though the plural is arguably a bit more idiomatic. Thanks for asking - I should have added that as well. :)
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Further confusion in that everything is geared to the American market. ie cookie is american terminology for a biscuit. "kaka" is a cake. In much the same way that you persist in translating ALG (sorry I don`t have a swedish keyboard) as moose when it should be elk.
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I don't think you'd really say "a kind of cookie" in English. You'd say "some kind of cookie."
Doesn't that mean different things, though? Like, "some kind" implies an uncertainty? English is not my native language though.
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No, it doesn't imply uncertainty (unless you use it in a question). It's not incorrect to say X is a kind of Y, but it's not the common use. You'd say X is a type of Y, or X is some kind of Y.
As Berniebud says, you are correct. There is a difference. "an Oreo is a kind of cookie" means that an Oreo is definitely a cookie, and is a particular type of cookie. "an Oreo is some kind of cookie" means the Oreo has cookie-like properties and is most likely a cookie but its exact classification is uncertain. The key difference is the word "a" versus "some", not "kind" versus "sort", "type", etc.
The Duo translation above is correct.
I believe "It is some sort of cookie" would translate to Det är något slags kaka if my Swedish is proper. Please let me know if I am wrong. :)
