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- "Svarar han eller hon?"
25 Comments
Does this ask "is one of them answering" or "which one of them is answering"? What would be the opposite one's translation to Swedish then?
The word order seems, "Answer he or she?" Like, two people asked a question and the answerer is pondering which one to answer first. I guess the "he and she" should have been enough context because it is not "him or her" -- but it is still confusing.
781
I think that one question was asked to a group of people, for example to a committee. There are two people who can answer this question well, a man and a woman. Who will answer? He or she?
Strange word arrangement for me (native english). Could someone help explain it?
A normal statement would "Han eller hon svarar", but in a question the verb comes first:
"Svarar han eller hon?".
If you have two verbs, e.g. "har svarat" (have answered) or "ska svara" (will answer), the modal verb and the main verb are split like this:
"Har han eller hon svarat?"
"Ska han eller hon svara?"
I still think (after the dozenth time seeing it) this sentence makes very little sense in English. We'd just say "who answers? " and I'd assume swedes would too.
When learning a language, you learn better if you stop judging it based on the logic of your own native language. You also learn better if you do not question the meaningfulness or usefulness of sentences you are asked to learn, thess are just grease for the dry grammar cogs.
It's incorrect in English. You are asking about the subject, so you should use both subject pronouns (i.e. "he" and "she"). "Is he answering or she?"
If you were asking about the object, you use both object pronouns (i.e. "him" and "her"). "Do I have to answer him or her?"
In Swedish, do you only need to put the verb in once? Would "Svarar han eller svarar hon?" be correct?
It works like in English - you can say the verb twice, but you don't have to.
The TTS actually says "Svarar han eller hón". Instead of pronouncing the oo in hon, she says hón, like the oh in "och". Is this how swedes would normally pronounce these sentence? and sorry for my english, I'm no native english speaker. Tack så mycket!
PS: (Alt + 134 = å)
- 781
To my ears the 'o' of hon and och sound the same, but that are just my ears ;-).
You can listen to forvo.com for the pronunciation by native speakers. https://forvo.com/search/Hon/sv/
The o sounds in hon and och don't sound the same. I agree with Tanya, the o in hon here is incorrect.
- 781
I never heard a difference on Duo, but now that I have listened quietly to Forvo, I also hear it. That I have never noticed the difference! I'm a little bit ashamed ;-(
Why isn't "he or she answers?" not accepted? I feel like that should be correct...
- 1394
Both in Swedish and in English, it is possible to form questions either like you did, by just adding a question mark and changing intonation, or by changing word order (and maybe add do in the process in English). Since this works pretty much the same in both languages, we only accept the same type of translation. So questions formed by just adding a question mark are only accepted translations if the Swedish question is already formulated that way.
It doesn't actually work in English. Because you are asking about the subject, you should use both subject pronouns: "he" & "she" (he answers or she?). Plus, you need to make the intonation of a question, obviously, because it would be a statement otherwise.
