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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Det var roligt!"
38 Comments
1447
You're right, the new voice does this mistake here. I've never heard it do that anywhere else.
Yes!!! I totally agree. I keep typing "They were fun" and getting it wrong. They should fix the audio because she is definitely saying "De var roligt", but they never will! There are many incorrect sounds in this Swedish course that have been reported years ago, but they still have not fixed them. "De är inte roliga"
Unfortunately, all Duolingo courses made by volunteers share the problem that their contributors have zero say over the TTS implementation. A few other courses have far worse problems than the Swedish one does, and they don't get fixed either. It is very, very annoying - but nothing the Swedish team can do anything about, I'm afraid.
413
Strangely enough, if you listen to the TTS at the slower speed it is pronounced correctly - "de" (it; the t in "det" is silent). Why I don't know. The reason the normal speed pronounces it "dom" is probably because written "de" meaning them, ie NOT "det", is pronounced "dom". Strange error, indeed. /native Swede
1447
Oh yeah. Det var inte roligt could mean anything from 'That wasn't funny' to 'I'm very sorry to hear that'.
Maybe I'm just being pedantic here, but in English 'fun' means enjoyable and 'funny' is associated with laughter. I guess funny things are generally fun, but the opposite isn't true that often. Going to watch a Shakespeare tragedy or a serious film would be fun, but probably not funny. Maybe I'm just splitting hairs!
If you ever speak to a swede in English, you will notice they often say that events (such as Shakespeare tragedies) were/will be "funny" when they mean fun, because they are the same word ("rolig") in Swedish. You can tell which one is meant based on the context. I think "lustig" can be more specifically "humorous" but it's not as widely used.
I would like to ask any native swedes on here that also speak fluent English how they conceive of "roligt". It is a common mistake for Swedes speaking English to use "funny" when they mean "fun", but I have had great trouble explaining to them the difference. Many argue that something funny is by definition fun - but could it be that language shapes the way that we conceive of our emotions?
So Swedes - when you use "roligt", are you ever thinking specifically that the experience is what we in English would call "fun"? Alternatively, specifically "funny"? Or is it always just a general expression of enjoyment?
1447
roligt can be so diluted at worst that it basically only means 'good'. I personally believe that language shapes our cognition a great deal, and I think my native language makes me disinterested in the distinction you're making between fun and funny.
have fun is 'ha roligt'
the movie was funny is 'filmen var rolig'
1447
dbrown23 I think if you want to get really good at a language, this is one of the greatest hurdles. It's so natural to prefer things to be as they are in one's native language. Some distinctions may even be hard to accept.
We see lot of examples in the opposite directions in this course :)
Re-recording
The voice is not quite perfect on this sentence, as of July 27th, 2017, so I've taken the liberty of re-recording it.
As many others have noted above, it sounds like she's saying de rather than det. It gets further confusing since both de and det are pronounced dom, while det is often pronounced just de.
Please find a correct recording on http://duolingo.vydea.io/84eed58c8f5640ada8f2c41600cf0839.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! :)
It's more common without the g, but it's not wrong to pronounce it either. Generally speaking, the more you're trying to enunciate clearly, and the slower you speak, the more likely you are to pronounce it. I am a very, very fast speaker normally, so in everyday speech I would indeed tend to drop it. :)
I thought in phrases like this in the past tense in Swedish were also used in the present tense. Would "it is fun" make sense as a translation as well?
178
I recall that in an interview with Agnetha Fälkskog she said (in English) that as the years moved along, traveling and performing weren't funny anymore. This lesson helps me understand why she said it that way.