"Stränderna"

Translation: The beaches

[MonsieurCal]

What is a beech tree?

[Arnauti]

Fagus sylvatica, European beech, is the one we have here, in Swedish it's called en bok (with the plural flera bokar). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_sylvatica

It is sometimes claimed that the word bokstav ('letter', as in A, B, C… ) is derived from this word, stav is a cognate of staff or stave, they would carve runes into oblong pieces of (often beech-) wood.

[MonsieurCal]

Ah very interessting. Thank you for a swift reply.

[j4cobgarby]

Står och stränderna, tittar på persikorna

[Parspective]

why the singular form is with "a"(strand) and the plural one is with "ä"(stränderna)?

[4oYBIxtO]

This happens with rather many words, especially when the "a" is followed by an "n". You have to learn it.

[JYH6UtXB]

Actually, Perspective, I came with the same question. I think I'm observing a pattern of words that end in -en using "a" and words that end in -er use "ä," which, phonetically, makes sense to me. "Ä" sounds to my American ears similar to 'eh' (sometimes) which makes it similar sounding to that ending -er (where the "r" is sometimes swallowed, anyway). So, there's stranden (where the "n" is not silent) and /strehndeh{r}na/ (stränderna), where it's an 'eh' sound followed by a differently-spelled 'eh' sound. I welcome more experienced students and, even better, mods to weigh in on this theory as I'm not confident in it but would like guidance about when to spell with 'a' vice 'ä.' Or, 'o' vice 'ö.'