"Vi simmar till ön."

Translation: We swim to the island.

[g.uh]

I simply loved that word ö. I never thought that would exist a noun with one letter hehehe

[jungerstein]

This letter likes an island with two volcanoes on it. Very nice word.

[jacob738094]

What about the english noun, "I"?

[Anton708429]

I is technically 2 sounds (aj). French has a bunch of one sound words like this. For example the word for water is "eau" (pronounced 'o'). The word for eggs would be "œufs", but still pronounced as one sound, similar to ö, btw

[devalanteriel]

Re-recording

The voice is not quite perfect on this sentence, as of August 31st, 2017, so I've taken the liberty of re-recording it.

Here, the stress is off, so it's not a huge error but still one that merits a new one.

Please find a correct recording on http://duolingo.vydea.io/7d889813fa734cbda1871b80d2bd581c.mp3

For more info on re-recordings, please check the info thread: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/23723515

Thanks for listening. Ha en bra dag! :)

[JMikkola]

Island är en ö

[sotnosen93]

Translation: Iceland is an island.

[NicolaGold2]

I am missing the W (or V) sound or letter in this verb. I looked it up in several germanic languages most have the w/v but intersting: in islandic it is synda and in nynorsk it is symje. No w/v! And in føroyskt I found only the noun svimjing. That is intersting. Has the w/v sound gone lost somewhere? Or was it in the original urnordic language without w/v?

[mitya57]

Old Norse had ‘svimma’. Danish and Norwegian Bokmål still have ‘svømme’. So Icelandic and Swedish/Nynorsk probably lost the v/w sound independently.

[deactivated user]

Does Swedish make a distinction between "to" and "towards"`? I guess "till" can never mean "towards".

[Arnauti]

Right, to is till and towards is mot, those pairs correspond more or less perfectly when speaking about direction.

[cheecat]

"Till" can mean "for" or "on", yes?
and "på" can also mean these? can someone please explain the distinction?

[ohpollux]

Is there a distinction in whether we're swimming to the island on a boat/ship or or, like, physically swimming?

[Arnauti]

Yes, simmar is only for swimming but seglar is used for 'sailing' and åker for boats in general.

[NoodleInhaler]

Would that be "swimming" like on your own, or "swimming" as in a boat??

[sotnosen93]

It's swimming on your own. I wasn't even aware that you could use "swimming" to refer to being in a boat.

[Santiago966133]

Why not "we are swimming towards the island"? It is idiomatically better ...