"Det står en man i rummet där jag ska sova."
Translation:There is a man in the room where I am going to sleep.
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Great question, Harold.
This annoying little word may actually be the single trickiest one in the entire course. Modals are generally difficult between any languages, since they seldom have one-to-one relationships, but ska in specific can be translated into so many things, and what's idiomatic can vary greatly. Depending on the context, ska can translate to either "should", "would", "will", "may", or even occasionally "must". And that's without even taking into account the considerable differences within English (such as "must not" typically meaning two separate things in the US and the UK).
We've actually discussed this internally recently, and I'm afraid the best general answer I can give is that ska more often than not means "will" or "is going to", and that we use "should" mainly when it's unidiomatic in English to not use the future tense. I realise that in this case, some sociolects - primarily UK ones - may use "should" to indicate the future, but I think allowing it would cause more harm than do good. It's important to realise that ska, here, can mean neither a recommendation, nor an expectation, nor an obligation - hence, "should" is not a good choice.
It's a really difficult word to teach well, and we'll probably be continuously evaluating it forever.
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Thank you! A bit like in French: "La chambre où je dors" / "la chambre dans laquelle je dors."
Very late answer here but it's still a good question so I'll give it a shot. – They're all accepted answers in this case, but står probably sounds most idiomatic. We can't give any strict rules for when to use är vs finns, but as a general rule of thumb, finns is for more permanent existence and är for more temporary presence. So finns is not a very natural choice here.
For things that are perceived to be in a position like standing, sitting, or lying, we very often prefer to use those verbs instead of just är or finns when we're describing something. So Det ligger en tidning på bordet 'There lies a newspaper on the table' is more idiomatic than just Det är en tidning på bordet.
On the other (third?) hand, if we're just asking where something is located, we're pretty likely to just use är or finns. E.g. Var är tvålen? 'Where is the soap?' At least for movable things. For geographic entities, the default is ligger. For instance: Var ligger Timbuktu? 'Where is Timbuktu?'
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when I hear that sentence in Swedish it gives me an image of a man standing in the middle of the rum just silently present there. I don't imagine, just because Swedish uses "star" that it necessarily means his is standing. Is that correct.
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I thought that " there is a man standing in the room where I have to sleep" would be acceptable as a translation...can someone please give me some feedback about why it is not?
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I think I've read about some rule saying that when there was a relative, the name before could stay indefinite rather than definite, but I'm not sure what it is exactly. Wouldn't it apply here?
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Sorry, no. I tried several answers to figure out which part I had wrong and it turned out to be this one.