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- "Who are they?"
"Who are they?"
Translation:¿Quiénes son ellos?
101 Comments
1388
From what I understand, "Quién" is to be used when the answer is expected to be in the singular e.g. "Who eats fish? He does." "Quiénes" is to be used when the answer is expected to be in the plural e.g. "Who are they? They are men."
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What wenderen said is my understanding too. It appears that Spanish has a delineation between singular versus plural "who?" For singulars it uses "quién" whereas the plural seems to require the "-es" suffix
"Quiénes" is what must be paired with plural forms, therefore only option 3 is correct.
You have to follow the three rules. Rule 1: if a word ends in n, s, or vowel and is stressed on the last syllable it needs an accent Mark. Ex: limón, jamás, mamá. Rule 2: if a word is stressed on the second to last syllable and it does not end in n, s, or a vowel, it needs a accent mark. Ex: difícil, inútil, cárcel and Rule 3:Every word stressed on the third to last syllable needs an accent mark. Ex: pájaro, propósito. Sometimes words need it for a specific meaning. Ex: tu tú, se sé, si sí, etc.
I'm pretty sure you can drop the ellos/ellas but perhaps not.
Perhaps not because son is also used with "ustedes" so maybe it's a rule that when asking a question and the conjugation is shared by multiple pronouns, just to sound appropriate you need to include the actual pronoun?
I dunno... just thinking out loud here but If you were standing next to someone and pointed to a group of people across the room and asked your friend in english "who are y'all" that person would think "wtf? who are y'all? ... um? you hit your head bro?".
So in Spanish, since son can mean "are" for ellos/ellas AND "are" for ustedes, maybe it just sounds weird to them without the actual pronoun to make it clear that you're not a bumbling retard? lol
sí. However, because son is shared by both forms of "they" (ellos y ellas) AND ustedes, if it's not absolutely clear who you're talking about, you'd want to include the pronoun in order to remove any ambiguity.
If it's clear from the conversation that the question would be intended to mean "they" or "you all" then sure, you can drop the ellos, ellas o ustedes and just say "¿Quiénes son?". Otherwise, include it.
So there is not an answer that says Quienes son ellos? I don't get why ellas is correct because my current spanish teacher says to use ellas only when referring to female and ellos can be used for both female and male. I would think the ellos would be a more correct version, but they don't list it for an answer.
Because "son ellos" is "are they". Since it's "they", that means it's plural. Quiénes is required when asking "who" about plural subjects.
- "¿Quién es ella?" - Who is she? (she, singular. So this gets "quién?")
- "¿Quiénes son ellas?" - Who are they? (they, plural. So this gets "quiénes?")
¿comprende? :)
Duo gives hints to the answers, not just the correct answer. Clicking the hints, Duo is assuring you that a form of ser should be used (as opposed to estar). By now we should understand the basics of conjugation and be able to recognize when it needs to be done in a sentence. Look at the hints, but then think about if it majes sense here or if it seens like it needs to be modified for the specific sentence.
Because that is a mish-mash of different conjugations and possessives that don't jive with each other.
quieres
is the 2nd person conjugation ofquerer
so it means "you want",son
is the 3rd person plural conjugation ofser
so it means "(they)are", andsuyo
is 3rd person singular long form possessive adjective (i.e. his, hers, yours).
So ¿Quieres son suyo? can translate to one of several possibilities. All of which are nonsensical lol.
¿Quieres son suyo?
-
Do you want (they)are yours?
-
Do you want (they)are hers?
-
Do you want (they)are his?
If your typing of quieres was a mistake (and I'm pretty sure it was since you're at level 7) and you meant to type quiénes, then the only thing wrong is suyo which is the possessive adjective.
¿Quiénes son suyo? ... would translate to
- Who are yours?
- Who are his? or
- Who are hers?
hope that cleared it up :)
333
I think the problem is that Dl does not know that THEY is used for male and female Hahaha
I assumed "Who are they?" would be referring to their name(s), and I got the question wrong when I translated it as "Como se llaman?"
In English, asking who someone is equates to asking for a name (I can't think of any other time we ask this question). Is "Quienes son ellos/ellas" a different question in Spanish?