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In Britain, we call schoolchildren "pupils", whereas people in higher education we call students.
Yes, I prefer this translation. Учень = pupil (= Schüler), студент = student (=Student), one can see the consistency there :)
Yes, google translate put pupils. Wrong to say "these are my pupils" i was originally guessing "these are my eyes".
Two questions:
1) Why isn't it correct to use a dash here (Це - мої учні)? 2) So the declaratives decline with nouns (цей, ця, це, ці), but not the pronoun це? In other words, це can be used for both pronouns "this" and "these," correct?
1) If you use a dash, Duo will accept it anyway, it's not sensitive to punctuation.
2) We don't use a dash there. It's used instead of це or before це (not sure about this one). E.g. Коти — тварини. Коти — це тварини. (not sure if a dash is needed or це replaces the dash).
3) These = ці
Це can either be a declarative pronoun ("this milk" -> це молоко), or... a.. I don't know the name for it. A pronoun pronoun :D It's not attached to some noun, it means "this" in the sense of "it".
Це учень -> This/It is a student.
Цей учень -> This student.
Це цей учень -> This is this student (sounds weird, but let's use it for the sake of an example)
So, це and це simply overlap. "This is this milk" would be "Це це молоко" :)
Think of the German das. It can mean "this" in the sense of "this/it is" (Das ist eine Blume, das ist ein Buch, no matter what the gender is, it's the subject of the sentence), but also "that" in the sense of neutral gender declarative pronoun (das Buch).
