"I eat before him."

Translation: Jag äter före honom.

[Auramyst]

Does this mean "I eat before he eats", or "I eat right in front of him" (as in the saying "I bow before the king"), or both?

[Zmrzlina]

Before in time, not position.

[Auramyst]

So what would "before" be in Swedish, in that sense?

[Zmrzlina]

Framför means "before" as in "in front of".

[Auramyst]

Tack

[KteCMHkt]

this is curious. I entered "innan han" to signify "before he does" and I know that this construction works in other settings. But, then again, "före honom" works better. Just a note...

[Arnauti]

At the moment, only före honom and innan honom are accepted answers. före would definitely only be a preposition here. I'm a bit unsure whether innan han would really be ungrammatical, but it doesn't sound good without the verb [Jag äter innan han äter is a perfectly good sentence though] so at least I'd like to say it's something I wouldn't recommend non-native speakers to say.

[JeffW808922]

I also wrote, "innan han," since I thought both people are eating.

[Kbotica]

I'm guessing, because past tense isn't used here, that this is talking about a routine? Or no?

[Zmrzlina]

We can't tell from the sentence. It just means I eat before he does.

[Kbotica]

So when might you say "jag åt före honom"?

[Zmrzlina]

If it is an action in the past, I suppose.

[pH.tsx]

According to WordRefference, "innan" is a conjunction and "före" is a preposition. Since "honom" is the object of the verb, "innan" is incorrect, right?

I tried "innan", expecting it to be marked as incorrect, to see if I had understood correctly but it was accepted. Now I am a little confused.

[devalanteriel]

innan can be either a conjunction or a preposition, so either works. It can often sound colloquial to use innan as a preposition, though, which is probably why only före is a default translation here.