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- "Du äter en smörgås med ägg."
29 Comments
My translation is officially "with eggs" so in this translation, it implies neither specifically. My "accepted" translation was "a sandwich with egg" and I am not sure if it missed the plural, by my translation makes it clear an indeterminate but nonzero amount of egg is on/in the sanwich itself. So I'm not sure which is implied in Swedish.
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)?
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.
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.
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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" ?