"Finns det inget kaffe?!"
Translation:Is there no coffee?!
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I love the implication of panic via the punctuation. Very Swedish, from what I understand.
You can create the same sort of question in Swedish by using intonation, Det finns inget kaffe? However, that is not the sentence you're translating here, so you should use the normal question form Is there no coffe? or Isn't there any coffee?
How is "There is no coffee?!" not also an answer? The ?! makes the question implicit, and the word order shouldn't make a difference in translation (not transliteration)
We're sticking to question-oriented word order in English translation so as to make a point of the inversion of subject and verb.
I wrote "Is there not coffee?!". Would this be correct? If not, how would you say this?
That would be Finns det inte kaffe?! I get that the end result is the same, but we try to teach the difference between "no" and "not" throughout the course.
1180
Yes - it's a deponent verb from the Old Norse Middle Voice - or 'passive' forms.
Basically Old Norse had forms which included the reflexive pronouns onto it - so 'sek' (Swedish 'sig') became -sk on the end of a verb. English has borrowed such words from Old Norse, including 'bask', which derives from 'baðask', literally 'bathe oneself.'
In Swedish, as well as Norwegian and Danish, this suffix was weakened into -s. Thus 'finnes' is from Old Norse finnask, meaning 'to find oneself,' or 'to be found'.
The sentences expresses surprise and/or indignation that there is no coffee, presumably because somebody drank or took it all.
Jag vet inte vem som översätter sådana meningar. Kollar ni inte på verkligen vad betyder inget/inget eller inga/ det betyder any på engelska bara inte no. Kanske kan ni inte engelska tillräckligt bra!