"According to him, the belt is green."
Translation:Enligt honom är skärpet grönt.
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When the sentence is in this order, I like to think of Enligt honom as meaning "only according to him". This way the literal English translation makes a lot more sense: Only according to him is the belt green.
Just don't forget that such is not the actual translation, merely a means of remembering how to structure the sentence.
Why "är" comes before "skärpet" in the sentence "Enligt honom är skärpet grönt"?
The verb must be in second place (except in subclauses and questions). enligt honom is an adverbial and when we put it first, we have no choice but to put the verb next. If we had put skärpet first, it would be Skärpet är grönt enligt honom
To me the latter example makes more senss, mainly because I'm a native english speaker. The original sounds as if you're askinf if the belt is green. Lol
I know this was three years ago lol, sorry for being late to the party, but I was just wondering if the correct translation to this phrase would be considered a normal way to speak. I don't know of course, it just sounds weird linearly translated. Also wondering because I've seen sentences written out in previous lessons as [subject] är [description] rather than with är being the first word. Were the others incorrect or is this just a special case? Please explain how it is if it is
Yes, either enligt honom är skärpet grönt or skärpet är grönt enligt honom is fine. Your second question is actually what Arnauti's post explains - how and why the pieces need to move around if you put the adverb first.
but i dont understant why... the verb doesnt account for the subject. "Ar" isnt responsible for the pornoun "him" but it is for the "belt". Its so uncomfortable to get used to it lol
With sentences like this one I am glad my native language is German, as we use a very similar word order as Swedish. In fact if this was a "Swedish from German" course I wouldn't have to use my brain so much. English as in-between-language kind of messes up my German word oder logic...
I know it's just a typo, but "word oder logic" seems to sum the issue up nicely. :)
You have no idea how many lessons I got wrong because my fingers typed something else than what my brain was thinking. I am sometimes typing too fast for my own good. Sadly in ALL the languages. :D
Me too. Swedish word order seems very natural, but when it comes to translating an english sentence into swedish I sometimes mess up anyway. But this sentence is one of the first I can't easily translate into german whithout making it sound strange or old-fashioned. Has anyone a good suggestion?
I can't think of a German translation that's both common in everyday modern language and follows the Swedish sentence structure specifically. Not because of the subclause, mind, but because of the "according to" part.
Exactly, the best translation I can think of is this: "Ihm zufolge ist der Gürtel grün." But it's not something I would use every day. That's why I thought someone else might have a better idea.
Exactly. I suppose there's laut ihm to mirror the Swedish, but that has the same problem.
As a native Dutch speaker, it is particularly frustrating that I keep mistakenly translating this as "enligt honom skärpet är grönt", since in Dutch we would actually use the same sentence structure as in Swedish, it is just that seeing the English word order throws me off :(
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In a previous sentence discussion one of the members pointed you coud say "hasten är vit enligt henne", so extrapolating "Skärpet är grönt enligt honom" should be also right.
(edit to fix an error indicated by Arnauti)
*skärpet
However, you should really try to keep word order the same as much as possible when translating here. Swedish and English work much the same so there is really no need to change word order in most cases.
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Ok, now I see. Thank you for your suggestion, I will keep it in mind. And thank you for pointing out the error, I will edit the previous message to fix it.
if 'är skärpet grönt' is the belt is green, then how would you write 'is the belt green?'
That would also be Är skärpet grönt? Questions are created by putting the verb before the subejct. (if there's a question word like var 'where' etc it goes first of all, but nothing else can go before the verb).
Non-question main clauses, like the one above, always have the verb in the second place. Here, the sentence starts out with an adverbial phrase "enligt honom", so the verb must go right after that.
Sometimes people will tell you that questions are created by 'reversing' word order, but that is not a good description, since it presupposes that the subject should go first in normal sentences. However there is no such rule, the rule just says that the verb must go second (in main clauses that are not questions).
I remember from some other exercise the nouns with adjectives also get an additional article, like "det grönt skärpet". That doesn't seem to be the case here, so when does that apply?
Oh thanks, I did but apparently not all of them loaded in the mobile app. Will check out the rest now.
Edit: I did now, but while the other comment explains where I went wrong (using grönt instead of gröna), there's still the question of why it's correct without the double definite form and when I'd use which definite form.
Read through to the end of my comment on adjectives ;)
Essentially the difference is whether the adjective is attributive or predicative.
In the attributive form the adjective comes before the noun eg. the yellow turtle.
In the predicative form the adjective follows the noun, linked by a verb (often is/are/är) - eg. the turtle is yellow.
The attributive takes the double definite form as you describe.
eg. det gröna skärpet eller den fina hunden
Whereas, the predicative takes the en/ett form in the same way as an indefinite noun.
eg. skärpet är grönt eller hunden är fin
will it be right if i said enligt honom skarpet ar gront {sorry that i wrote the sentence without their vowels }
No. Read the above comments. The verb (är) must take the second place in the sentence. This is called the V2 rule.
First place = Enligt honom
Second place = är
Third place will always be the subject (in this sentence = skärpet) if the subject is not in the first place.
Adjectives change form according to the word that they are describing.
For indefinite nouns in the singular eg en katt - a cat, ett barn - a child etc. the adjective has an ett or an en form which correlates to the noun in question. Typically the ett form of the adjective has a "t" on the end of the en form but they can be a little irregular.
So using the word green the above nouns would be:
En grön katt
Ett grönt barn
In the indefinite plural form the adjective has a different form. Typically this takes an "-a" on the end of the en form. So in this case: several green houses - flera gröna hus. Plurals take the -a ending regardless of gender.
In addition there is the double definite form. Swedish has an oddity in that when a definite noun is used with an adjective a separate article is used in addition to the definite form of the noun. When we use the double definite form the adjective takes the definite form which is also typically the en form with a "-a" on the end. eg. the green animal - det gröna djur.
Note that definite nouns take the "indefinite form" when the adjective follows the noun. eg. The turtle is green - Sköldpaddan är grön. Huset är blått. Hundarna är vita.
The definite noun only takes the definite adjectival form in the double definite structure as described above.
So to summarise:
Singular en word: a green dog - en grön hund
Singular ett word: a green apple - ett grönt äpple
Plural of either en/ett word: turtles are green - sköldpaddor är gröna
The double definite of either en or ett word: the green lamp - den gröna lampa
Where the adjective follows the noun, it takes the "indefinite" form: the shirt is brown - skjortan är brun
More is explained in the first lesson on adjectives when you get to that. (Edit: Also see my additional comment below to Martin re: attributive vs predicative adjectives which further clarifies this comment.)
I get the word order.
A direct translation into English actually makes a question that could actually happen. It's one thing to communicate to someone that "according to him", he believes the belt is green. But what if you didn't have the information about what "he" believes and you wanted to ask someone about what he believes. I could actually ask, "according to him, is the belt green?"
How would I say that in Swedish?
Again, I think I've answered my own question. Can I move the "according to him" part to the end of the sentence?
Does this work: "Är skärpet grön, enligt honom?"
grön is a regular Swedish adjective, so it follows the common pattern of
- singular indefinite en-word = base form
- singular indefinite ett-word = base form + t
- both plural forms = base form + a
- all definite forms = same as plural
- optional mascular singular definite form = base form + e
Have a look e.g. here for a conjugation table: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gr%C3%B6n#Conjugation
Ahh, I got it. So, adjectives are the ones who have tricky conjugations here in Swedish, not the verbs.
Please have a look at the above comments - this question has been answered before.
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'Just according to him' does not make sense. It might be a way to remember but incorrect because it could be a it is a green belt also..not is belt green question.
Sentences do not necessarily have to be true to be useful in the course.
It's not uncommon colloquially, but it is very colloquial, so it's not accepted.
