English Translation
Do you know Tom?
In Swedish, is there a difference between 1) ‘Känner du Tom’ and 2) ‘Känner du till Tom’? In Danish 2) does not exist. In English, however, you have 1) ‘do you know Tom’, and 2) ‘Do you know about Tom’.
As it has been explained to me, the semantic difference between känna and känna till , does not match to the one between to know and to know about (when talking about people, at least)
As I understood it:
- känna: implies personnaly knwoing the person. I.e: -Känner du Tom? +Naturligtvis! Han är min bror.
- känna till: is about being aware of someone’s existance. I.e -Känner du till Tom Holland? + Ja tror det. Han spelade i “Spiderman”, eller hur?
Whereas, in english, I feel both would be simply “know”. And you would use “know about” if you are knowledgeable about a topic. I.e: -Do you know about Tom Holland? +Absolutely, in and out, I’ve read every biography about him // Not so much, I’ve only seen him in a couple of movies
After some digging around, it seems that känner till would rather match with “know of” than “know about”. This seems to match with the topic been discussed here and the explanation given on this blogpost
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Great info, jeg takker!
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