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- "The people of Sweden"
"The people of Sweden"
Translation:Sveriges folk
16 Comments
1463
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.
1463
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.
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 :).
159
You can (and have to) do that in Spanish. The more I learn languages, the more I understand Dr. Zamenhof...
1463
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.