"The people of Sweden"

Translation: Sveriges folk

[dbozjak]

Why not sveriges folket? Since we do have the people of sweden?

[Arnauti]

We can't have a determinate noun 'owned' by a noun in the genitive. Just like you can't say the girl's the book in English.

[Gerda82]

Thanks for the explanation. I still think it's kind of weird that there is no determiner at all in this sentence. In Dutch, you would still use a determiner: "het Zweedse volk", meaning "Sverige folk" and "The people of Sweden".

[Arnauti]

I don't know what word class Zweedse is in Dutch (I know zero Dutch) but it looks more like an adjective than a noun?

If we use an adjective instead, we can say both det svenska folket and svenska folket. It's unclear to me why we can say svenska folket without an article: I usually tell people this occurs with 1) things that function as names 2) with numerals and similar adjectives. It clearly isn't #2, but maybe 'svenska folket' has been used so much it's gotten close to #1 after all.

[Gerda82]

Oh yeah, sorry, I got a bit confused. It is an adjective in Dutch: because I'm used to the way Dutch handles this, I think my head likes to think that "Sveriges" is an adjective also - but of course, it isn't.

That's very interesting, thanks for replying in such detail! You seem like a really great person and language lover :).

[Arnauti]

Thank you! I can't deny being a language lover :)

[RAlberdi]

You can (and have to) do that in Spanish. The more I learn languages, the more I understand Dr. Zamenhof...

[MikyNik1856]

I quickly looked up this guy on wikipedia and the dude is quite interesting. I'm curious though, i can't see the connection he has with this comment. Would you tell me more?

[Christiane980578]

What is the difference between folk and befolkning?

[Arcprotorp]

Is there a thread explaining the differences between "folk" / "människor" / "personer". In some cases they seem to be interchangable, but I have a hunch that it is not true for all cases.

[stuartrdr]

Is there a reason why "Folket av Sverige" doesn't work?

[Arnauti]

We just don't say that. We don't use av in constructions like that in Swedish. You say a cup of coffee, we say en kopp kaffe. We use av for 'material' and 'made by' and some other things, but not really for this 'genitive' meaning.

[Tentsmuir]

Should that not be "Sweden's people"? Where is the definite article?

[Patrick889093]

So you don't say the people of sweden . It is Sweden's people

[BernaRosen]

Thank you Arnauti

[lammkott]

It's not "some (collection of) Swedish people", it's the people, so why not folket?