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- "The letter is to the left of…
"The letter is to the left of the newspaper."
Translation:Brevet är till vänster om tidningen.
25 Comments
A late reply, but vänstra is the definite form. It gets a little confusing, though, since Swedish has a lot of idiomatics using indefinite directions.
In a phrase like "on the left side", for instance, you'd use either på den vänstra sidan or more idiomatically på vänster sida. And in this sentence, of course, English uses the definite while Swedish does not.
Unfortunately, the best answer I can give is that this is one of those cases where prepositions often have to be learned by heart.
We often use ligger/sitter/står, but it's normally not necessary. "Är" is perhaps more common when you describe the position/placement in relation to something else (here the newspaper).
Kevinlinton, I agree that without Arnauti and the rest of the Duo team this would be a far different course. I estimate that about 50% of what I have learned, I learned from the actual course, while another 50% I've gotten from the comments of these wonderful people! I wish I could start a GoFundMe page and send them all to some exotic place for two weeks vacation.
Is this also correct (Duolingo didn't accept it)? "brevet är ÅT vänster om tidningen"
Sometimes left is vänster, sometimes it's vänstra. Any kind soul could explain me the difference please and when to use each of them. Many thanks ! <3
See Devalanteriel's reply to KatherineMaas above from a year ago. vanstra is definite form. And Swedes don't always follow the rules so, it depends... ;)
Swedish simply doesn't have the "to the left of" construction. We can say either of these:
- till vänster om = "to left of"
- på vänstra sidan av = "on the left side of"
No real reason - just happens to be the right preposition. Swedish doesn't use av in that way.
Most commonly, om = about, and av = of. But there are lots of exceptions.
