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- "Ett brev, flera brev"
53 Comments
I would like to say «thank you» for these sentenses with «Ett… flera…». It's helpfull.
Because, apparently, someone in charge of this section, who is a rigid thinker, is sure that "flera" only equals "several", and saw in OED that several is specifically less than many. Yet, I have spoken both Swedish and English since I was two, and I agree with your translation. So does this wiktionary page: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flera
1156
I put "many", thinking it was a synonym for several. This was marked wrong, but I was told "more" is correct, not several.
flera generally translates either to "more" or "several", and we find that it's more confusing to a much larger number of people to accept them as synonyms. We distinguish between many / several and många / flera throughout the course. Making the distinction is far more common than not in both languages, but especially in Swedish, to the extent that most natives will consider flera as a synonym of många plain wrong.
Unlike in Hugo's rudely put assumption, it's not like we decide how things should be and never change them. Things like these are evaluated over and over again. Actually, there are some inconsistencies in the course because we used to treat them as synonyms but stopped doing so because it was detrimental to learners in general.
And in this specific case, it's not like only the OED uses the "more than two but fewer than many" definition. So do Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, and Random House. I didn't bother checking more. MW does list the "many" usage as "chiefly dialectal", which I think sums it up nicely.
Wiktionary is an amazing resource, but far from an absolute authority. In fact, its entries on flera are incorrect in both English and Swedish: flera in the sense of "many" is a pronoun, not an adjective (as claimed by the Swedish page), and not a determiner (as claimed by the English page). When Wiktionary contradicts multiple of the major established traditional dictionaries, I would use caution in adhering to their suggestions.
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Thank you for explaining it to me.
Många hasn't come up yet, but google translate gives "fler" as "more" and "flera" as "several", so, with hindsight, confusing when "more" came up for "flera".
Swedish is still very new to me and I'm sure the way it works will become clearer with time.
Thanks again.
I was wondering the same thing - in English I would interchangeable use "several" and "many".
Technically, 'many' is used for countable nouns and 'several' for an unspecified number of things.
Same!!! I put "many" on instinct, but it is actually "several!" annoying...
Is this the partitive use, as in some soup, some sugar? If so, then flera seems better translated as some when not referring to a portion, yet several is accepted as the only answer.
It sounds like in "brev" the "v" is pronounced as an "m" when the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence. Am I mishearing this or is this true?
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I heard that here and in another sentence. Glad it's not just me. Those two instanced of "brev" in this sentence sounded different.
I hear the difference, too, and very clearly at that, though to me the pronunciation in the plural sounds more like an "n". Like Elin.7-1, I heard this before in another example sentence with "brev". But I dimly remember that on that earlier example's talk page a native speaker stated that they could not hear the difference.
Thanks Magnus, did you hear the robot though, it really sounds like an M... so confusing.
I just found the answer to my question. I.e. brev is an ett word and ends in a consonant, therefore no change or addition for the plural
A good rule but there are exceptions.
ett salt - salter : a salt - salts
ett museum - museer : a museum - museums
Normally, plural = singular for ett-words where last letter is a consonant. More examples:
ett djur - två djur (animal)
ett hus - två hus (house)
For ett-words where last letter is a vowel, you normally add an n:
ett äpple - två äpplen (apple)
ett foto - två foton (photo)
Example of exceptions:
ett öga - två ögon (eye)
ett öra - två öron (ear)
Yes, but "bokstav" is a letter of the alphabet :).
en bokstav - flera bokstäver
Confusing. The translation says, "A letter, more letters." I typed "A letter, many letters". I still think I'm right, or at least closer to right than that translation. Or no?
No, not normally. That'd be många. Some dialects do equate several = many, though.
Well, some nouns are ett-words and some are en-words and "brev" is an ett-word. The en-words are more common though.
Yeah I see that, is there any pattern to it or do you just have to learn which nouns use which?
Normally, you have to learn it separately for each noun.
You can find some patterns here (in Swedish).
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One is accepted, it's even the suggested answer as you can see on the top of this page, but Duolingo has the bad habit of sometimes generating answers with 1 wherever we wrote 'one'.
"a letter" is fine, but your error report says "s letter". I know they're next to each other and that typos can be easy to miss, but please proofread your suggestions before sending in error reports.
Is there a difference between a letter in the alphabet and a written paper letter when it comes to using "brev"? /If not, what is the Swedish word for the other?
A letter of the alphabet = en bokstav (several letters = flera bokstäver)
A letter (in the mail) = ett brev (several letters = flera brev)
There us a fine line between 'A' letter and 'The' letter in English and this is not clear here. Yet the system condemns 'The'
