"Jag tycker om franska viner."
Translation:I like French wines.
9 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
That's a very good observation! It is
ett vin - a wine
vinet - the wine
viner - wines
vinerna - the wines
so the plural of "vin" must be an exception.
I know it's plural in Swedish but I like French wine, I drink wine daily, is used singulary as is water when it comes to food and drink, than "wines".
Don't think it should be marked incorrect since it's contextually accurate and used in current English conversation.
We can actually say jag tycker om franskt vin in Swedish as well. I honestly don't like this sentence at all - because, as you say, there's no conflict in idiomatics between them, yet there is in grammatics. I'll flag this sentence for review in the next tree.
Really late answer, but there is a difference here in English.
'Wine' is either countable or uncountable depending on the usage. The uncountable form is a generic used to refer to single-fermented undistilled alcoholic beverages (usually but not always made from grapes unless further qualified), while the countable form is used to refer to specific varieties or specific instances of wine.
English actually has a rather irritatingly large number of nouns like this where there is an uncountable generic form and a countable specific form, and they confuse even native speakers on a semi-regular basis. Other examples include 'paper' and most words that name foods (such as 'onion' or 'pasta').
When you are talking about types of wine, you use the plural in English.
"I prefer Italian wines to wines from Spain."