English Translation
I thought you quit.
Would it be wrong to say one of these sentences instead?
- Jag trodde att du slutade.
- Jag trodde att du hade slutat.
That doesnât sound quite right, unless you follow up with some kind of time reference, such as âi gĂ„râ.
That sounds fine.
Fun fact: you can actually abbreviate the sentence a bit further: âJag trodde du slutat.â
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Interesting. So it doesnât work quite exactly like with English, where itâs
- I [simple past tense] that you [simple past tense].
- Jag [simple past tense] att du [simple past tense].
In Swedish, youâd prefer to use the present perfect or past perfect over the simple past tense? That is, either one of these:
- Jag trodde att du har slutat.
- Jag trodde att du hade slutat.
where the âharâ/âhadeâ (and even the âattâ) is optional.
This is a difficult question with no definitive answer. Iâm sure there are contexts where âatt du slutadeâ will work, but I feel that âhade slutatâ is the safest choice, at least with a verb like âslutaâ, that has a terminative aspect. But if you take a verb like âljugaâ, itâs natural to say âJag trodde du ljögâ (I thought you lied).
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Interesting. Thanks for elaborating (and sorry for the late reply).
Letâs say, for example, you want to quit smoking. You could do this in two different ways:
- stop completely from one day to the next; starting tomorrow, you will never smoke again
- slowly fading out; today, you smoke 10 cigarettes; tomorrow only 9; the day after that only 8, and so on
Could one say that you use
- âhade slutatâ to convey that one beautiful day you simply stopped, from one day to the next
- and âslutadeâ if you wanted to convey the slowly fading process, that each day you reduced a bit more until eventually you finally arrived at zero?
It could be either that or a process; the important thing is that you had stopped.
No, to convey that you would have to say something like âhöll pĂ„ med att slutaâ.