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- "Jag hittar inget arbete."
59 Comments
english question: I wrote "I do not find any jobs" and it was market incorrect because I should have wrote "I do not find any job". I thought that in English you always need the plural after "any" and "some"
You're right, there needs to be a plural after "Any", it sounds odd without it.
How about: This does not make any sense. Singular. Any tree that is cut down is a tree less. So, there is not always a need for a plural. However, within the context of above, yes, it needs to be plural. Then again: I cannot find any job in this town is once again in singular.
I think the main issue was in jobs vs job the rest of the sentence was approximated based on your input. For example I put "I can't find work" and "I find no work" was suggested as an alternate answer
I doubt there are any rules that hard-and-fast in English but in general you're right. You could for instance though say "I will take any job" which is correct even though the singular follows 'any'. This test is confusing as the English answer is not actually good English. No one would say "I find no...", they would say "I can't find a...". There are a few very formal situations where this is not true but they are unusual.
No, I believe the error is with the negation. “Inget” negates the noun—thus, it will translate to “no job,” whereas “inte” negates the verb—thus it will translate to “not find.” The given sentence uses “inget,” and therefore, “I find no work” would be the correct translation.
I don't know what this sentence means. The translations don't seem to make sense in English. E.g. what is "I find no job" supposed to mean? I don't have a job? I can't find a job? I won't find a job? I didn't find a job? All of the above?
This threw me a bit as well. "I find no job" is not great English at all. I'd say it should probably be "I can't find a job". I don't know if it is technically incorrect but if someone said it to me I'd assume they were a non native speaker
It is technically incorrect. Zero in English is (weirdly) plural; "I find no jobs" is grammatical, if a bit odd.
I find no job means I don't find a job. It is a more colloquial way of saying it in some regions.
656
Natively. "I find no job" is a collection of English words, but they do not go together in this order.
Hey guys, could anyone help me with an outtime but recorrent doubt? What is the difference between ''ingen'' (or ''inget'') and ''inte''? I suppose it's sth like: Jag har inget hus.......I have no house. Jag har inte hus.........I don't have house. Are those sentences even correct? It sounds i little weird to me... One more question: can I use ''inte'' with all verbs or just some especif ones?
- 1455
ingen/inget/inga is like 'no'. It negates the noun. Jag har inget hus 'I have no house'.
inte is like 'not'. It negates a verb. Jag har inte ett hus 'I do not have a house'.
Both Jag har inte hus and I don't have house are strange (wrong) because they lack an article. As a rule of thumb, we always need an article when talking about a noun in the singular in a way that is not general or abstract.
Is it more common to say Jag hittar inget arbete than it is to say Jag kan inte hitta ett arbete (like you would in English)
Also, in English we would say I can't find a job or I can't find work Work, I think, is a mass noun here isn't it? Does Swedish have an equivalent?
- 1455
It's generally the case that you sometimes prefer the construction with can/can't when we just use the verb. Like, I can see the stars can be either Jag kan se stjärnorna or just Jag ser stjärnorna in Swedish.
I probably wouldn't use arbete as a mass noun in this construction ("jag kan inte hitta arbete" sounds wrong), but it is used as a mass noun in many other cases.
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In english "I find no work" doesn't seem correct, would the sentence need to be different to be in the past tense i.e found instead of find?
I put "I am not finding work" and it said I was wrong and corrected me with "I am not finding any work." I don't understand why I need "any".
I am not finding work = Jag hittar inte arbete. The use of inget instead of inte makes it "not any".
Here I am again. This time I wrote, "I did not find work". It counted me wrong and said "I find no work". I would never say that in English. A foreigner might... Is there a more correct translation in English for this (that would be accepted)? I don't understand why my answer is wrong.
Well, your answer was marked wrong because it is in the past tense, while the Swedish sentence is in the present tense ("I'm still looking for work but I can't find it"). "I find no work" also sounds unnatural - the best translation as discussed above is probably "I cannot find any work". I think the given "correct answer" is grammatically correct but agree that it doesn't sound right.
I put "I have not found work." and was marked wrong. Is this too semantically loose for a translation?
- 1455
You changed the time of the sentence. What you wrote would be Jag har inte hittat (något) arbete.
so does inget say both any and not_? I put iam not finding work, for I thought inget would put the negative in the sentence, but not both negation and any. that is confusing
- 1455
any translates to either någon/något/några or ingen/inget/inga in Swedish, depending on context. The words cover different areas.
Basically, no in English normally translates to ingen/inget/inga in Swedish, and not translates to inte.
There is. It behaves like a regular ett-noun ending on a vowel, so it's:
Indefinite: arbete - arbeten
Definite: arbetet - arbetena
It's not exactly the same as an ett-noun is it? If it was wouldn't the plural definite take an +a arbetena (like äpplena)
- 64
I wrote "I am not finding work" and it was marked wrong. I should have written "I am not finding any work." Where is the word "any?"
"inget". "I am not finding work" would be simply "Jag hittar inte arbete".
The mods are obsessed with driving this point home, namely that inte = not, and ingen/inget/inga = no/not any. It still tricks me, because in almost every case, it makes no real difference in meaning.
- 317
Duolingo gave me the correct translation as "I can't find any work". Swedish also has a way of expressing 'can' as 'kan'. Maybe there are several options to translate this sentence.
Duo seems to be treating [negative] + [countable noun] in English as a singular here (it suggests "I find no job" if you type "I find no jobs", for example) which is a pretty serious grammatical error. It should be a plural.
What is wrong with 'I did not find work'. Why should unacceptable English be the only correct answer for us to get past this lesson?
The problem with "I did not find work" is that it does not accurately reflect the meaning of the Swedish sentence, which indicates that the person is still trying to find work but hasn't had any luck.
I do find it weird that "I find no work" is still up after 3 years since the mods seem(ed) pretty active here :\
What if the sentence were, "Jag hittar inte inget arbete?" Does Swedish have a double negative, meaning that the speaker found at least some work?
"I didn't find any work" should be fine. There's no way an English speaker would say this in the present tense.
I think the best is honestly "I can't find any work" since it's implied the person is unable to find a job for one reason or another. But I don't know if DL is allowing that yet or not. The problem with putting the English in past tense is that it sounds like the person was looking but gave up, whereas the Swedish is specifying that the person is still in the process of looking without any luck.
- 317
Would you consider accepting "I have not found any work" ? I know that the present perfect exists in Swedish, but the best translations are not always the literal ones.
