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- Topic: Swedish >
- "Du äter en smörgås med ägg."
28 Comments
Does this mean you are eating 'a sandwich and an egg' or an 'egg sandwich'?
This is interresting. So we can create words adding 2 together, like "äggsmörgås" for "egg sandwich", also "citronte" for "lemon tea". As long as the main meal* is at the end? (in these exemples, smörgås and te)?
That's cool, now we can make really dumb compound words like 'vattensmörgås'
1492
Yeah, a better translation of that into Swedish would be Du äter en äggsmörgås, but we're lenient here :)
Why is "you are eating a sandwich with an egg" not accepted, but the grammatically-wrong "you are eating a sandwich with egg" is offered as the "correct" answer? In English, "egg" requires an article, and indefinite one in this case.
- 1492
In Swedish, it's a bit unclear what ägg is in this case. Presumably it's plural, which is why eggs is the preferred solution. But it is also possible that it could be a mass noun, which is why we also accept the answer egg.
In English, different speakers have different opinions about whether egg can be treated as a mass noun or not. The main divide seems to coincide with the Atlantic ocean, at least according to this blog. We try to accept both American and British English in this course (the main sentences should reflect American usage, but both should be accepted).
If you want to say a sandwich with an egg in English, that would definitely be en smörgås med ett ägg in Swedish too, so that answer cannot be accepted.
And the reason …with egg is shown to you is that the system tries to match whatever you input to whatever it thinks is the closest accepted answer.
As an ingredient especially. You'll need butter, flour, egg, and salt.
Or when saying, "You've got egg on your face."
Aha! Epiphany. Here, egg is an ingredient! We cannot or need not know the quantity. It's simply "with egg," which may stand alone referencing singular or plural egg.
Example: I am vegan (true!). If that dish or box of food is made with egg, I will not it eat.
- 260
English does not require an article here. Another example could be "You are eating a sandwich with cheese". You can say "a"/"an" (and maybe "the" in some cases), but it is not required in a sentence like this.
Ho God, it reminds me of the British "omelette sandwich" I ate a few years ago. I still have nightmares about it...
for me it translates to "eggs", can someone explain why plural if it didnt mention "er/or" ?
