"De lyssnar inte, trots att läraren pratar."
Translation:They are not listening, even though the teacher is speaking.
20 Comments
I said "They don't listen, even when the teacher is speaking" - not accepted. "even while" "even when" "even though" and even "even as", would be acceptable in English. I appreciate that "even though" is specific to the active process on-going, and the other three options are slightly more generalist suggesting that if the teacher were to stop and start talking again then they still wouldn't be listening. Is this too subtle a difference or does Swedish have similar subtleties so my answer was correctly identified as incorrect?
Swedish will practice similar subtleties, which is why it was marked incorrect.
Why should "even if" have a different meaning from "even though" in this case? I don't get it.
A good explanation here about the difference between even though and even if, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv122.shtml
Yes, that has a slightly different meaning, kind of like "they are not listening, however the teacher is speaking." Or in Swedish: "de lyssnar inte, men läraren pratar".
So, just to make sure, as I'm looking into Swedish after a while, the personal pronoun for third person plural is always written "de" and pronounced "dom"?
Yes. It's de as a subject (they), but dem as an object (them). Both are always said as "dom".
The various translations into English are just too anal-retentive for my taste. Each time I try out what Duo wants (rather than what I know as a native English speaker to be good English), I get the evil buzzer. I'll try to get the "right" one to get to the next stage, but it isn't right to me. And just so you know, I'm a practicing attorney and a damn good writer. May we lighten up a bit with the translations?
I wrote: They do not listen despite that the teacher is speaking. Was marked as incorrect...
