"Mannen vars fru är polis är här nu."
Translation:The man whose wife is a police officer is here now.
16 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Why "vars" and not "vems"? Are they synonyms or is there a difference?
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Apparently "a cop" works as well. For the record, I think an article is definitely necessary before whichever term one uses. Without the article it sounds very awkward in English.
In this kind of context, the word officer after police is implied in Swedish, but needs to be stated in English, right?
The answer that showed up on my screen was: "The man whose wife is a police is here now." In English, this does not actually make any sense.
In English, you could say, "The man whose wife is police is here now," but that would be very unusual, and would sound "clunky" to most native-English speakers. Also, DuoLingo did not accept that version. Most often, we would say "a police officer," "a policewoman," or "with the police."
In direct answer to your question, yes, the word "officer" would need to be stated in order for the statement to read or sound correct in English .
Actually in some places on the East Coast U.S.A. "The man whose wife is police" would be perfectly normal.
I wrote, "The man whose wife is police is here now." I don't understand why this isn't accepted; even if it isn't 100% right technically, it's prefectly acceptable to say it like this.
I think that's taking it a bit too far. We already accept a police, which is considered incorrect by many native speakers, and not accepted in most other Duo courses as far as I know, but skipping the article too would be even more non-standard.
(If anyone wonders about 'a police', see here: http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/09/a-police.html)
I'd actually argue that "I am police" is more correct than "i am a police". I think of it as a shortening of with the police.
The man whose wife is a police is here now - this doesn't make sense in English and should not be accepted
The man whose wife is in the police is here now - this makes perfect sense in English and should be accepted (and also the default translation)
Tack!
vars sound a bit like "warsh" (like in SHame or SHrapnel), is it accurate ?
Yes, r + s creates a sound like this whenever they meet in Standard Swedish (where we have the standard Swedish r sound). It's called a retroflex sound, similar things happen when the R meets D, T, N, or L.
The spelling "who's" is a contraction for "who is" or "who has" (or rarely "who does"). The sense of "belonging to whom" always uses the spelling "whose".