"Han gick in i väggen."

Translation: He walked into the wall.

[adesva]

NB! "[Någon] gick in i väggen" usually means that someone is depressed/weary due to daily activities. It is mostly used to talk about people having overworked themselves.

[Joel__W]

Yeah, it's pretty silly that they are using an idiom as an example sentence. The idiom is definitely more common than the literal meaning of the expression. In UK English you would say He burnt himself out.

[cynyork]

In the US we might say he hit the wall

[use_her_name]

Well... it's better to burn out than to fade away

[RiiaC]

Before reading the comments I was assuming that it meant "to walk into", as in "enter", the wall, much like happens in books and movies when magic is involved and passing through a wall will lead to adventure.

[Weltkulturerbe2]

I thought about Harry Potter, trxing to reach the train.

[HaroldWonh]

So does this mean "He walked into a wall" or "He burnt himself out", or both?

[devalanteriel]

It's far more likely to mean the latter. If, however, somebody actually were to physically walk into a wall, this would be the correct choice of phrasing as well. My dog has a tendency to walk into lamp posts when he's not paying attention.

I'm honestly not really sure whether this sentence really belongs in the tree or not, and I've made a note since earlier take a closer look at it later, for the next iteration of the tree.

[reimersholme71]

Lots of colloquialisms pepper the other courses, so why not?

[devalanteriel]

Because they require good ways of teaching them. Most users don't have reliable forum access and there's no good explanations system in place.

[OpenVMS]

Can someone explain the difference between in and i?

[devalanteriel]

In this case, in i works like "into", but English has made a single preposition out of the two constituents. Generally speaking, though, in is a direction and i is a place.

[James704885]

Since Swedish is very specific and particular about direction and language. What happens if his walking into a wall caused him to walk through it? Is it than Han gick in I genom väggen?

[PBe3M6]

I'm not Swedish but I'd guess something like "han gick rakt (i)genom väggen" = he walked right through the wall.
Don't take my word for it though, just a guess

[CommonQuail]

Looking at the English translation, would it make sense to say, "Han åkte in i väggen" ? Or is this completely wrong ?

[PBe3M6]

åka implies ett fordon (a vehicle), so in this case it woudln't make sense, since it's specifically walking into the wall, plus as you may have seen from the other comments, it's also a set expression.