The difference between lite, liten, lilla and små
Difference between lite, liten, lilla and små Grmmar terminology Part of Speech Noun / Substantiv Singularis / Singular Pluralis /
A short answer is that “lång” is an adjective and “länge” is an adverb. The adjective lång means “long or tall”, while the adverb länge means “for a long time”.
People may get confused with “lång” and “länge” because we deal with adjectives and adverbs.
You really have to know what adjective and adverb is in order to understand the difference between “långt” vs “länge”. You have to know the agreement rules of adjectives in Swedish.
If we start with the adjective “lång” which means in Swedish as a general term, long and tall. It can also mean prolonged and lengthy. In other words, the adjective lång is a dimensional adjective, which we use for spatial and temporal dimensions to describe extension, time and space. We use it to describe a physical extension, like size or length, duration, position, direction and distance. Both adjectives and adverbs have spatial and temporal dimensions.
The formal requirement for adjectives is that they can be compared, like long, longer and longest.
Here we have “lång” as an adjective as you describe a person or an item. If we describe neutrums in Swedish, or we can call them “ett-words”, so to say the words that have “ett” as an indefinite article, then we also add an extra “t” at the end of the indefinite adjective, but also, we add an extra “a” at the plural adjective. In other words, here we speak about adjectival agreement in Swedish:
Remember that we always have “a” at the end of the definite adjective.
There are two overlapping rules that we face when we deal with adjectives and adverbs. One of the is mentioned above, “a” at the end of plural adjective ( both definite and indefinite ), but also “a” at the end of all definite adjectives ( both singular and plural ). Another overlapping rule is when we have “t” at the end of neutrum, ett-words, and we have “t” and the end of adverbs, and this is the main cause of the confusion.
Here we have a “t” and the end of the adjective because we describe it as an ett-word.
Here we have an adverb that describes a verb, the way “how” he “replied”.
We have to understand that, the most of adverbs in the Swedish language, which probably applies to other languages as well, derive from adjectives. There are pure adverbs, yet most of them have the adjective form, and here is the confusion for the Swedish language.
We have looked at “långt” as an adjective describing neutrum, ett-words, but “långt” is also an adverb, which means “far” in terms of distance.
Besides, that adverb has a “cousin”, which is “länge” and means “long” in terms of time, “for a long time”.
The reason why we call these adverbs as cousins is because they have a similar comparison, and both adverbs “länge” and “långt” derive from the adjective “lång”.
Let’s look at these different adverbs, starting with långt, as a spatial dimension, which means “far” in English. The place adverb (spatial adverb) describes position, direction and distance in relation to the action (verb)
Jacob ran far, David run further and Peter run furthest.
Now, let’s look at länge, as a temporal dimension which means “long” in terms of time duration, like “for a long time”.
In these two examples, with “running and “waiting” the cousin adverbs can be distinguished because of the verbs that they refer to. “Springa längre” and “vänta längre”, “run longer” and “wait longer”
The big confusion appears when we have a verb which matches with both these adverbs.
Now if we compare:
And here comes the biggest confusion.
This can be interpreted as:
So, in this case, you need context, the text where the sentence appears.
If we take the superlative, längst;
which can also be interpreted as:
As mentioned before, “länge” is a temporal adverb.
This means “David has smoked for a long time” in terms that David is a long-time smoker. But the interesting part is when we have negation “inte” with “länge” and comparative form “längre”
The different forms of “lång” in Swedish
Swedish adjective “lång” , which appears as , lång, långt, långa, as adjectival agreement, and as comparative forms lång, längre, längst.
On other side we have an adverb, “långt”, which appears as långt, längre, längst as comparative and another adverb “länge” which appears as länge, längre, längst as comparative.
The thing that people confuse in Swedish language is –t at the end of adjectives and adverbs, like in this case långt, which is both adjective and adverb. Another thing that confuses people is the same comparative forms of adverb långt and länge which is längre and längst.
For the adjective “lång” there is also a natural gender (masculine) form in the Swedish language,”långe“. In other words, the adjective that refers to substantive must semantically refer to someone of masculine gender.
Difference between lite, liten, lilla and små Grmmar terminology Part of Speech Noun / Substantiv Singularis / Singular Pluralis /
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