# Swedish perception of "Jenta og gutten..."



## Dan2

Altho the vocabularies of Swedish and Norwegian are closely related, there are some very common words that differ between the languages.  I've constructed a very simple Norwegian sentence consisting mostly of words that don't look like their Swedish equivalents:

Jenta og gutten liker å spise ferskener, men nå er de ikke sultne.

I'm curious how the average Swede would perceive this sentence.  Is it unintelligible?  Or, thru exposure to each other's languages, and thru archaic or uncommon or dialectal words in Swedish, can the average Swede readily understand the sentence?  (Since I am only a Norwegian learner, errors are possible in the sentence, but I think it's pretty close to correct.)

Thanks in advance for your patience with my curiosity.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Dan2 said:


> Jenta og gutten liker å spise ferskener, men nå er de ikke sultne.


Nearly all of the words are so common and/or have cognates in Swedish that most native Swedes won't have any trouble whatsoever except maybe for the third noun - I was only 90% sure about that one. I found when looking it up that I had remembered correctly. 

This is how I understand it: (Spoiler warning, highlight to reveal the text):
The girl and the boy like [eating] peaches, but now they're not hungry.​
I get more exposure to Danish than Norwegian, but it's a great help all the same, as many words are the same in Danish and Norwegian, but different in Swedish.

Is the syntax 100% correct in Norwegian? I'm only wondering because the placement of now in Swedish affects how you would translate it to English.
The same is true about the thing you like, is it the action or the object? In Swedish, we would normally refer to the object, unless we particularly liked the action as well.

I'm also curious about the Danish version of this sentence, which I imagine will be very similar except for the first two nouns.

Sorry to be so cryptic, I'm just trying to avoid spoiling it for subsequent posters.​


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## Dan2

Wilma_Sweden said:


> The same is true about the thing you like, is it the action or the object?


Well I think "de liker å spise ferskener" is well-formed as "they <verb> to <<verb> <object>>".  But you're right; I could have said "Jenta og gutten liker ferskener...".  But I wanted to include the word "spise" because in Swedish I knew only "äta" and my 700-page Swed-Eng Eng-Swed dictionary does not include "spisa" in either direction, so I thought "spis-" might be Norwegian only.  But with further research I see it exists in Swedish as well.  (Maybe it would be more relevant to ask if Norwegians recognize "äta".)

That leaves jenta og gutten som er ikke sultne...


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## hanne

Drengen og pigen kan godt lide at spise ferskener, men (lige) nu er de ikke sultne.

I don't have a problem with the use of "spise", I think the sentence sounds perfectly natural.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Dan2 said:


> Well I think "de liker å spise ferskener" is well-formed as "they <verb> to <<verb> <object>>".  But you're right; I could have said "Jenta og gutten liker ferskener...".  But I wanted to include the word "spise" because in Swedish I knew only "äta" and my 700-page Swed-Eng Eng-Swed dictionary does not include "spisa" in either direction, so I thought "spis-" might be Norwegian only.  But with further research I see it exists in Swedish as well.  (Maybe it would be more relevant to ask if Norwegians recognize "äta".)
> 
> That leaves jenta og gutten som er ikke sultne...


Hehe, sorry to be a pain... I understand that you wanted to include both verbs. I just got caught up in syntax.

Jenta exists in Swedish as jänta, but is considered archaic in Swedish. I even found gutt being boy in some Western Swedish dialect, but most Swedes will know it only from Norwegian. Sulten is not too unlike Swedish 'svulten/utsvulten' (starved).


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## basslop

*Å ete* is also Norwegian. In proper Norwegian it is mainly used for animals, but spise is also used for animals. But if humans eat with badly manners one may underline this by using *ete*.

In many dialects though, like mine, *ete* does not have this meaning. It is just synonymous with *spise*.


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## basslop

I unerstand Dan2's point of using words different in Norwegian and Swedish. In daily natural Norwegian I think the sentence should be: Jenta og gutte liker ferskener, men akkurat nå er de ikke sultne. Mabe that clearifies the use if nå, Wilma_Sweden? 

 Eh, ferskener, is that pärsikor in Swedish?


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## Tjahzi

Like most people on these forums, I'm interested in foreign languages and hence not an ideal test person, however, I do understand the sentence quite well. However, in order to really answer your question, I can say that at age 15, I had probably not known the word "ferskner", maybe failed to deduct the meaning of "sultne" and possibly not heard of "liker".

And yes, "ferskner" is "pärsikor".


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## Dan2

basslop said:


> ... Jenta og gutte liker...


I'm not familiar with "gutt" with just an -e ending.  If this is just a typo, no reply necessary.



hanne said:


> Drengen og pigen kan godt lide at spise...


 (The quote is Danish.)  "lide" surprised me, and the first Danish dictionary I checked gave *only *"suffer".  I now understand the "kunne lide" meaning, but it's disappointing how often dictionaries miss important usages.

So it sounds like "gutt", "like" (verb with meaning "to like") and "ikke" are words that Swedes would know only thru exposure to Norwegian (or Eng "like" or Dan "ikke")?

And in what context would one use "spisa" rather than "äta" in Swedish? (Cf. German "essen", "speisen"; but I can't think of any cognate to spis- in English.)


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## Wilma_Sweden

basslop said:


> I unerstand Dan2's point of using words different in Norwegian and Swedish. In daily natural Norwegian I think the sentence should be: Jenta og gutte liker ferskener, men akkurat nå er de ikke sultne. Mabe that clearifies the use if nå, Wilma_Sweden?



What I was trying to get at is this difference in Swedish with the placement of now:
1) Pojken och flickan gillar persikor, men nu är de inte hungriga.
The boy and the girl like peaches, but right now/at the moment they're not hungry.
2) Pojken och flickan gillar persikor, men [de] är inte hungriga nu.
The boy and the girl like peaches, but they're not hungry now.

In Swedish, we often use fronted adverbials to make a point. The first clause can't be changed around a lot, but the second can. In 1), now is important, this is why I said right now/at the moment. In 2), hungry is more important, the personal pronoun, de, is optional and now simply means now as opposed to yesterday or some other time.



basslop said:


> Eh, ferskener, is that pärsikor in Swedish?


Yes, but it's spelled persikor in modern dictionaries, although the spelling with ä has existed in the past.

We did, but no longer use the verb spisa for eating in Swedish. It transformed into a slang word for listening to jazz. An old children's song makes a pun out of it:
...
Vad vill du ha att spisa? / Korv och jazz (What do you want to eat? /Sausage and jazz)

We still use it in compounds like bespisa, utspisa and their respective gerunds: bespisning, utspisning. The meaning is to feed [someone]. They are associated with feeding large amounts of people, like at school or in the army. Different verbs are used for feeding babies and toddlers (mata), pets (mata), livestock (fodra, utfodra). 

The standard modern verb meaning to eat, äta, is used for animals, too.


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## Tjahzi

Speaking of rests of "spise/a", it's worth mentioning the noun "spis" - cooker.

Haha, thanks for enlightening me Wilma. I, now, remember having sung that sung many years ago without having any idea of the meaning. Now it makes sense.


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## Dan2

Thanks, Wilma, for the additional details.  What you say about fronted adverbials sounds similar to the situation in English.
"...but they're not hungry now" emphasizes "hungry", while "...but now they're not hungry" puts the focus on "now".

And thanks to everyone who responded.  There's no official, standardized language that's as close to English as Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are to each other, so I find the relationship among the latter fascinating.  (In written form, French is usually more intelligible to the monolingual English speaker than any of the Germanic languages are.  "...détails sur la décision de former une commission pour la protection de l'environnement fragile..." is pretty accessible to the English-only reader, while I think the most natural Dutch, German, and Scandinavian equivalents would be mostly gibberish. Typical Germanic-language sentences, even if all-cognate to English like "Jag vill äta med min vän"/"Ich will mit meinem Freund essen" are usually just too distant to be intelligible.)


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## Veterinaren

I would probably say that the "common" Swedish person would probably not understand the sentence.
Ferskener and sulten are not really used in Swedish.
Jente and gutt, are not used, but these words are "known Norwegian words" since they, to a swede, sounds a little funny.

The word liker, I suppose, some Swedes would have problems with if it was in spoken form, but reading it is a little easier I think(?) 

Sure, jÄnta exists in Swedish, but a common teenager have never used that word in a serious sentence... ever.
Sulten is one of those words that, after hearing and translating once, a Swedish person would remember that word for Danish and Norwegian. But it's nothing he/she would be able to guess if he/she have never heard it before. Probably the Swedish "hungrig" is easier for a danish or norwegian person because of English and German usage.

I understood the full sentence, except ferskener. But I live with a Dane and my best friend is from Norway.


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