"Ett århundrade"

Translation: A century

[Synthpopalooza]

Literally, a hundred years.

[creativemetaphor]

yep, and got marked wrong for it. blarg.

[Ulincsys]

Seriously, why is "A hundred years" not accepted?

[Zmrzlina]

Because that's not the same word. We want you to translate century <-> århundrade. A hundred years is "ett hundra år".

[StuartFras5]

But that's a really bad translation, out of context! "A century" is a hundred [thing, depends on context], and by itself is fairly meaningless.

Duolingo often has the problem with trying to translate very short passages into English, which is a very context-sensitive language. What it should probably be doing is translating longer sections....

[Yerrick]

Er, no, "century" refers only to the span of 100 years. This isn't Latin.

[YannickSchroer]

I really love this word! Århundrade! How cool is that?

[Chickenosis]

Can someone break the word "århundrade" down for me? I understand words better when I know the roots.

[devalanteriel]

• år = year, they're cognates
• hundra = a hundred, they're also cognates
• -de = a suffix that turns numerals into nouns

So basically "a year-hundred-er", if you will. :)

[Chickenosis]

Thank you so much. You admins really help me out a lot. I don't know what I'd do without you guys.

[devalanteriel]

Thanks - that's very kind of you. :)

Edit: And wow, thanks for the ten lingots - but I have some 13 000 or so, so please don't waste them on me!

[Chickenosis]

Haha I have extra lingots anyways, I've been keeping a very good streak. (for me at least :P)

Have a nice day

[Cr00ve]

Cheating little moderators :p

[ChristianH61]

Whata thw difference between ett and en. Sorry i know its late in the lesson to remember

[Zmrzlina]

Each noun is either and it's unpredictable, you'll have to learn it with practice and time.

[Synthpopalooza]

The only thing I can add that might help, is that nouns which refer to people or living things are usually "en" gender. The two exceptions are "barn" and "djur" ... under the old three gendered system, these would have been masculine or feminine.

[dryraindryrain]

I wonder if there is a benefit of some sort having multiple definite forms in a language. I never missed having another one while learning english as a german native. Well, in germany the third one "die" is used for plurals, however, some words use "die" even if it is a singular, those words are marked as feminin - which is growing to be kind of a problem of its own now with the ongoing alternation of languages in regards of equality.

[Zmrzlina]

Maybe there was a point to it in early indo-european, since it's a trait most IE languages share. But we'll just have to live with it these days.

[Yerrick]

Disambiguation, mostly. Take a sentence like "I went to the store and bought a box when I saw how big it was". Native speakers might assume "it" refers to the box, since it's later in the sentence, but it's a bit ambiguous.

But, if store and box belong to two different definite forms, then there's no ambiguity. We still have this in English when dealing with human pronouns; a written (or otherwise conveyed, say relayed verbally) conversation is a bit easier to follow when it's between two people of different genders.

[Ddddddddeeeee]

Such a fun pronunciation
I can listen to it eternally