I haven't seen Rita. The last time I saw something in Danish, it was Matador. I loved it, but they didn't exactly speak 21st century Danish in that one. I must admit I have never heard the Danish "nej" used the way you describe it, but I don't watch Danish TV the way I used to, for the simple reason that I watch so little TV in the first place. And I don't have any young Danish friends.Chris Peterson wrote:Interesting. Yeah, if I were reading something I'd commonly expect ikke. But I picked up on the nej parallel with English watching the Danish TV show Rita (about a teacher, FWIW). They use nej in that construction all the time. Younger people. I wonder if it's an idiomatic shift from the small world of the Internet, in a country where essentially everyone speaks English. Not common in Sweden, I guess (would you use inte, or a completely different construction?) I'm not sure how idioms move between the Scandinavian languages.Ann wrote:The expression många fel, nej would be a dead giveaway that you are not a native Swedish speaker. It is the "nej" that gives you away. I think you can say "mange fejl, ikke" in Danish, but you shouldn't ask me about that.Chris Peterson wrote: Just curious... when you post in a forum like this, do you switch your browser or computer to English, along with the spellcheck dictionary, or do you have a sort of hybrid dictionary with English and Swedish all mixed together (which might lead to många fel, nej?)
As for the Swedish translation of "many mistakes, no?" I would say, "många fel, va?". I would write, "många fel, inte sant/ eller hur?".
Maybe not. We don't usually say, "Vem är du?" "Jag är Döden" (pronounced, in his case, "dödn").Most of my experience with Swedish is watching Bergman movies, which isn't exactly modern conversational Swedish!
Ann
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