# Swedish: "inget"



## Fancythat

Hej!

I'm a little confused with the use of the word "inget". I always knew it to mean *no one, nobody; none, nothing* (thanks to the Lexin online dictionary), but then I found this sentence:

"Du ska ångra att du inget lärt"

(In the song _Allt vad jag begär repris_ from _Operafantomen_).

How would "inget" translate in that sentence?

I took it to translate into "You will regret that you learned nothing" but if that is the correct translation, why is "inget" before "lärt"?

If it helps in any way, the next sentence is "Minns vad Fantomen har begärt"

Tack på förhand!


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## Cerb

What appears to be missing here is "har", but I think this simply is a case of poetic license. It comes across as perfect (verb tense), "har lärt", to me. 

You'll want a native speaker to answer this, but the sentence looks ok to me even if might be a case of poetic license through use of a dated form.


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## Fancythat

Cerb said:


> What appears to be missing here is "har", but I think this simply is a case of poetic license. It comes across as perfect (verb tense), "har lärt", to me.
> 
> You'll want a native speaker to answer this, but the sentence looks ok to me even if might be a case of poetic license through use of a dated form.



Thank you! 

Just to clarify though, you think that it might be poetic license that it was changed from "Du har lärt inget" to "du inget lärt"?


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## Cerb

That's my theory. "Du inget lært" sounds very formal, dated and/or is a case of poetic license. The only thing I can say for sure is that it works for the song without anything being wrong with it. We'll need a native speaker beyond that. My guess is that:

"Du ska ångra att du inget *har* lärt" would be the best sentence if the music and rhythm didn't limit the options (short of rewriting it).


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## Havfruen

Fancythat said:


> I took it to translate into "You will regret that you learned nothing" but if that is the correct translation, why is "inget" before "lärt"?



"Swedish being a Germanic language, the syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a Subject Verb Object basic word order, but like German, it utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs, adverbial phrases and dependent clauses." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language

The second part of your sentence being an adverbial phrase -- _att du inget lärt_, "inget" comes before the verb not after.


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## Fancythat

Cerb said:


> That's my theory. "Du inget lært" sounds very formal, dated and/or is a case of poetic license. The only thing I can say for sure is that it works for the song without anything being wrong with it. We'll need a native speaker beyond that. My guess is that:
> 
> "Du ska ångra att du inget *har* lärt" would be the best sentence if the music and rhythm didn't limit the options (short of rewriting it).



Thank you very much!



Havfruen said:


> The second part of your sentence being an adverbial phrase -- _att du inget lärt_, "inget" comes before the verb not after.



Thank you, too! I knew about the verb-second word order, but I didn't know that it would affect the placement of "inget". I thought it would only place the verb before the subject, which didn't happen, but I guess that's due in part to the poetic license.


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## Tjahzi

Wow, if only every non-answered question would lead to such interesting discussions... 

Well, as Cerb has guess, this is a supine construction with _har_ omitted. If I was to rephrase it, to something that I would actually say, it would probably be: _"Du ska få ångra att du inte har lärt dig något" (-> "Du ska ångra att du inget har lärt dig" -> "Du ska ångra att du inget lärt"). _

You also guessed right about the reason for this rather odd construction. In "poetic" language, most rules my be broken and old ones applied at will.

The third question; why _inget_ precedes _hört_, is trickier. 
First of all, it should be stressed that modern Swedish prefers _"inte något"_ over _"inget"_ in most contexts. However, whereas _"jag har lärt mig något"_ is standard and fully grammatical, _"jag har lärt mig inget"_ sounds ungrammatically odd. Definitely more odd than _"jag har inget lärt mig"_, which "only" sounds old fashioned and less odd (since the preferred construction is _"jag har inte lärt mig något" _(also, this is the only possible word order for this construction)). 

However......I don't know the reason for this. 

Yet!


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## Fancythat

Thank you _very _much, Tjahzi!

I especially appreciate the examples of what a more natural-sounding construction would sound like. 
Should I ever need to use this phrase, I now know how to properly do so


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## Ben Jamin

Cerb said:


> What appears to be missing here is "har", but I think this simply is a case of poetic license. It comes across as perfect (verb tense), "har lärt", to me.


 This is an example of a major grammatical differenece between Swedish and Norwegian. If it were a Norwegian sentence then "har" would be lacking, but in contemporary Swedish it seems quite acceptable to drop "har" in subordinate clauses. I do not know, however, if this is acceptable in all kinds of Swedish, or only in semiformal texts.


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## Casparul

Ben Jamin said:


> This is an example of a major grammatical differenece between Swedish and Norwegian. If it were a Norwegian sentence then "har" would be lacking, but in contemporary Swedish it seems quite acceptable to drop "har" in subordinate clauses. I do not know, however, if this is acceptable in all kinds of Swedish, or only in semiformal texts.


 
As Tjahzi said, this form is a Swedish _supine_. This is standard syntax in Swedish - no poetic licence required!


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