"Do you know what the crown princess of Sweden is called?"
Translation:Vet du vad Sveriges kronprinsessa heter?
28 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I used kronprinsessan and I was told it was wrong, instead it said it should be kronprinsessa. Since the sentence is "do you know what the crown princess of Sweden is called?" shouldn't it be kronprinsessan rather than kronprinsessa?
Thank you for the quick reply. I'm not entirely sure I understood unfortunately. So would it also be "Landens kronprinsessa" as in "the country's crown princess"? Is this simply a Swedish grammatical rule, such as when you say "pojkens hund" that translates to "the boy's dog" rather than just "boy's dog"? Thank you for your hekp with this.
Yes, except it would be landets kronprinsessa since it's ett land and landen means something else. It's just like in English where you wouldn't say "Britain's the prince". But kungen av Sverige = 'the king of Sweden'.
Since pojken is definite, pojkens hund must be 'the boy's dog'.
i tried this but got it wrong "vet du vad heter sveriges kronprinsessa". Guess it matters where we place verbs, any advice?
The latter part of the sentence is an indirect question. In those, the subject always goes before the verb. The subject here is Sveriges kronprinsessa.
If you mean why it isn't definite in the Swedish version, that's because it is 'owned' by a noun in the genitive (Sveriges), and in those cases it's always indefinite in Swedish. It's the same in English really, you wouldn't say 'The country's the princess' in English either.
But /the/ is not added anywhere, also not at /sveriges/ right? So in English /the/ is kept, but before the 'owning' noun, and in Swedish it is skipped. Or do I miss something?
It's because we use different constructions. If you'd use a straight genitive construction, it would be the same: Sweden's crown princess, but that sounds a bit clunky, doesn't it? Conversely if we could use a prepositional construction, kronprinsessan av Sverige, the first noun would be definite too. (but we tend to avoid that kind of construction).
The you tend to avoid it, is it does it make gramatical sense to use the prepositional construction in all cases where the genetive construction works?
Actually we tend to use the av construction a lot with royalty, but for some reason I don't hear it so often with kronprinsessan, not sure why. Nothing wrong with it though, I probably overstated that. A quick search for the Danish crown prince gave me a little over three times more hits for the genitive construction, but that's still a lot of av:s.
It's usually possible to use a prepositional construction wherever you could use the genitive, but it varies a lot which preposition is used. As a rule of thumb, it's almost never av (but as I said, the royal families are an exception to that). The most common preposition must be på, but for some words we use till or för or other prepositions. Sometimes a compound noun will fill the same role, too.
I think sometimes it's difficult to know when to translate absolutely literally and when variants are accepted. Eg I put "do you know what Sweden's crown princess is called" & it was marked incorrect but that is a more literal, perfectly acceptable translation using the same rule in English, ie, "Sweden's" owning "crown princess" so no definite article needed. But it's marked as wrong.
2140
In this sentence, "know" is about the FACT of her name, not about knowing her personally.
veta: to know; to be certain about, to have knowledge or (correct) information about
känna: 1) to feel, to sense; 2) to know (a person)
Jag känner mig sjuk - I feel ill.
Jag känner att vattnet är varmt. - I feel that the water is warm.
Jag känner till att vattnet är varmt. - I know that the water is warm.
Vattnet känns varmt. - The water feels warm (to me).
Jag känner inte honom. - I don't know him (personally).
Jag känner inte till honom. - I don't know of him.
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/10355212/Vet-vs-K%C3%A4nner
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/k%C3%A4nna#Swedish
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vet#Swedish
https://www.theswedishteacher.com/blog/vet-kan-kanner-eller-kanner-till
I also made that mistake, I think it's because I'm used to 'vad heter' going together.
I suspect it's wrong for the same reason you can't say "do you know what is called Sweden's crown princess?" in English.
Though I guess in English that is technically a sentence, but it's asking if you know what thing isy referred to as [Sweden's crown princess], not asking what the crown princess' name is. I don't know if Swedish works the same way.
- 896
I agree with Nikos example on translating the English question provided. The Swedish translation that was provided, to my mind in English should read, "Do you know the name of Sweden's Crown Princess?" So, doesn't "Vet du vad kronprinsessan i Sverige heter" work, or is the solution provided the most common way to ask the question in Swedish? Tack!
