"De lär mig kinesiska."

Translation: They are teaching me Chinese.

[adrianxu_]

If you say "Jag lär mig kinesiska" it means I am learning chinese , right?

[devalanteriel]

Yep, that's correct.

[adrianxu_]

Thanks! :)

[Michelange66]

The voice seems to say ''dom'' instead of ''de''.

[devalanteriel]

Correct. Both de and dem are pronounced dom in Swedish. You could say de as well, but it'll make you sound formal and/or snobby.

[Yerrick]

Oh wow, dem too? Somehow I missed that, I had just been pronouncing it like it was English.

[devalanteriel]

It does happen in a few certain dialects, mostly in the Swedish spoken in parts of Finland, but pronouncing both dom is by a huge degree the most common option.

[PolyglAna]

Is the use of object pronouns the only indication as to whether "lär" means "learn" or "teach"?

[Arnauti]

Well, the object pronouns don't even really tell you that – jag lär mig means 'I learn' but de lär mig means 'they teach me'. There's a word undervisa which is unambiguously teach. Like, 'I teach Spanish' would be Jag undervisar i spanska. Or Jag undervisar honom i spanska - 'I'm teaching him Spanish'.

[PolyglAna]

Thank you! I was confused with this word meaning completely different things and having to say "I teach me" or whatever the literal translation is. Is undervisa as common as lär?

[Arnauti]

It's common too, but it's more tied to school situations and professional teaching.

[PolyglAna]

Thanks!

[GzmElcwa]

Why is Chinese plural here, or does the -a ending not mean plural in this instance?

[devalanteriel]

No, kinesiska is the name of the language - so it's a noun, not an adjective.

[DominikLeh2]

Nej,de lär mig svenska

[TabithaDally]

I understand that there are several languages spoken in China (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc). Does Swedish distinguish between these, or is "kinesiska" just used for all Chinese languages?

[devalanteriel]

It's the umbrella term. We'd use e.g. mandarin or kantonesiska if we wanted to be specific.

[TabithaDally]

Ah ok, I guess it's kind of the same in English. Tack!

[ApplePirog]

When read within the sentence the first sound in the word 'kinesiska' seems to be like 'h' but read alone it is pronounced like in the word 'köper', which I think is the correct version. Is it Duo reading it wrong or is it a feature of Swedish?