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kände hur

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Will709432

kände hur

Post by Will709432 »

How do you say that someone feels warmed by drinking something, like tea or coffee etc? So far I've come across a way of saying this using kände hur. Now I'm wondering why can't you say it without saying hur.

"han kände hur värmen från teet sprida sig i kroppen"

Is it possible to just say han kände värmen från teet sprida sig i kroppen...?

Why is the hur necessary, if it is?

User avatar
Will709432

Re: kände hur

Post by Will709432 »

Someone I asked about this said it wouldn't be grammatical without hur.

But that doesn't explain why it's needed or how to use it.

There must be some kind of grammatical rule but I cannot find any mention of it online anywhere or in any book.

It seems odd to me as an native English speaking person to say:

he felt "how" he shook - Han kände hur han darrade.

he felt "how" the tea warmed him up.

???

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fremanolas

Re: kände hur

Post by fremanolas »

I think it should be possible without hur when I see the following examples in the Svensk ordbok:

känna smärta; han kände illa­måendet komma; hon kände tygets struktur mot kroppen

EN :de: :netherlands: :sweden: :es: :fr: :norway: :taiwan:

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Crahdol
Japan

Re: kände hur

Post by Crahdol »

I agree with [mention]fremanolas[/mention]. Actually, I'd even say it is definitely possible to exclude hur.

There is surely some nuance to excluding or including hur, but even as a native, I'm not sure how rigourusly define that nuance. I'm not even sure there is a grammatical rule for it.

Though, I would say, with hur the sentence focuses more in the progress of acquiring the feeling. How you experience the change from the previous state to the next. Contrasting to a sentence without hur, which focuses more on the actual feeling, and to me has more a sense of "in this moment".

Känna hur can be used when talking about the feeling in a more distant or abstract way, and for writing stories this can sometimes sound better.
Känna on it's own is more tangible.
That is my gut-feeling for how to explain this. Can't really find anything online to back this up, though.

Vänliga hälsningar/Best Regards/よろしくお願いします
Crahdol
| 🇸🇪: Native | 🇬🇧: Fluent | 🇯🇵: N5 |

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Will709432

Re: kände hur

Post by Will709432 »

Thanks both for the response. Couldn't thank you until now as I was unable get back on here due to being sick with Covid which I caught last week. It's still about unfortunately.

User avatar
Will709432

Re: kände hur

Post by Will709432 »

Crahdol wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:09 pm

Though, I would say, with hur the sentence focuses more in the progress of acquiring the feeling.

So you would use hur for "han kände hur värmen från teet sprida sig i kroppen"?

but not necessarily for han kände hur han darrade?

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fremanolas

Re: kände hur

Post by fremanolas »

First of all, get well soon!
I think you don't necessarily need hur in the first sentence, but definitely in the second one, otherwise it would seem incomplete to me. You could also write Han kände att han darrade., but you'd need either hur or att.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native speaker, thus I could be wrong.

EN :de: :netherlands: :sweden: :es: :fr: :norway: :taiwan:

konstig

Re: kände hur

Post by konstig »

I'm a bit late to the party, but this is my take on this question:

Will709432 wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:24 am

"han kände hur värmen från teet sprida sig i kroppen"

Is it possible to just say han kände värmen från teet sprida sig i kroppen...?

Why is the hur necessary, if it is?

Your first sentence is incorrect. You cannot use the infinitive after "hur," you need to say "hur värmen från teet spred sig i kroppen." Your second example, however, is correct, as [mention]fremanolas[/mention] and [mention]Crahdol[/mention] have argued. So how should we understand the difference? I think that @Crahdol is right:

Crahdol wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:09 pm

Though, I would say, with hur the sentence focuses more in the progress of acquiring the feeling. How you experience the change from the previous state to the next. Contrasting to a sentence without hur, which focuses more on the actual feeling, and to me has more a sense of "in this moment".

Or to put it a bit differently, "hur" is used to emphasize the process, or the how of the process, so to speak. To clarify this I think it would make sense to use another example. Since your example is actually describing a process (the spreading of heat) the difference is less obvious which makes it harder to understand and explain.

Let's assume that you (or someone you know) have kids and that they make a lot of noise. When you tell me about all the screaming yesterday, you might say:

"Och då hörde jag hur de skrek så högt att fönsterrutorna i hela huset skakade."

Note that the sentence ends with a description of the action. Even though you wouldn't use "how" in English, using "hur" with a clause that actually answers the question of how/hur should make sense. Taking this as your reference point, and treating the less obvious cases as more abstract extensions of the same logic might help. I should point out that you might as well only say

"Och då hörde jag hur de skrek."

As I said, I would argue that "hur" is used to emphasize the process, the implicit how of the scream. To understand this a bit better it might be useful to contrast it with "att" version, as pointed out by @fremanolas.

"Och då hörde jag att de skrek."

This is a statement of fact. Let's assume that I am trying to get the aforementioned kids to stop screaming so that you can rest and recover. After twenty minutes the kids forget to keep their voices down and start yelling. When I remind them to be quiet, however, they deny ever having raised their voices. In this situation i might say:

"Jag hörde att ni skrek." (Implicitly meaning that there is no point in denying it because I heard it. (In terms of prosody there should be a strong emphasis on hörde.))

As I mentioned using "att" makes it more of a factual statement. Some people would probably use "hur" in this context. In a way, emphasizing the process of screaming could be a way to make the argument stronger. (In theory at least, in practice people will probably make the word choice quickly and out of habit.)

So what about your second sentence? I would argue that this construction is a bit more flexible and can be used in a wider array of contexts. If I hear the kids scream I might worry that someone got hurt. When I come running I might say

"Vad hände? Jag hörde barnen skrika."

Using "att" would be less than perfect (but not necessarily incorrect) since I am not primarily expressing a fact, but rather trying to clarify why I am asking my question. Using "hur" would emphasize the process of the scream, but I'm mainly interested in what caused the scream.

So what about your examples. As @Crahdol said,

Crahdol wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:09 pm

Känna hur can be used when talking about the feeling in a more distant or abstract way, [...]
Känna on it's own is more tangible.

"Hur" emphasizes the "hur" of the action, the process. I would argue that declaring an interest in the process of the feeling instead of directly adressing the thing that you are experiencing results in a distancing of sorts. Feeling the warmth is more direct than feeling the how of the warmth, so to speak. But I think this can be counteracted by using an explicit description at the end of the "hur"-sentence.

"Jag kände hur värmen från teet spred sig genom kroppen och blev till ett smärtsamt illamående som pressade sig upp genom magen tills jag spydde över mina skor."

You could expand the second sentence pattern to say something similar, but I don't think the sentence will flow as smoothly. When adding an explicit description of how, it is probably easier to use the "hur"-pattern.

Native speaker of Swedish, reluctant user of English, passionate student of (Mandarin) Chinese, occasional reader of German, casual participant in the green owl's French class.

User avatar
Will709432

Re: kände hur

Post by Will709432 »

I'm back. The covid lasted about a month but over it now.

Konstig, and others, thanks for your comments.

I'm reading the invisible man and just yesterday came across something that reminded me to check this post, another example:

där hörde de hur någon drog ut lådor i prästens skrivbord.

:)

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