"Las gatas beben leche."
Translation:The cats drink milk.
130 Comments
It seems odd, that one would have to check all the cats' gender, to be sure no males are in the group, before saying Las gatas. Would a spanish cat lady accuse you of bad grammar if you refered to her pack of female cats as Los gatos?
- 10
- 2
She may casually explain that they are all female in conversation, but it wouldn't be an offense to the culture like referring to a human male in the feminine. You do want to try to get gender correct, but it's a much bigger deal to get it correct in humans. With humans it is more offensive than a simple grammar mistake. It would probably be safer to just pick a gender than to start feeling her cats up. If you do that, you may irritate her, or worse, the cat!
- 23
- 14
- 9
- 1487
"las gatas" refers to female cats only, "los gatos" refers to male cats or cats in general
- 14
- 3
- 2
That is not always true. Lime humans is depends on a lot of different factos, including genetics area of origin etc. Some cats are sensitive to milk in the same way some humans are, but not all cats are.
- 12
- 7
- 3
- 2
- 2
We are being taught that "los" is the plural for "el" and "las" is the plural for "la". While "las gatas" is grammatically correct when talking about female cats, this is not explained, so surely the program should use "los gatos" as default.
- 10
- 9
- 5
- 3
Like "the cats are drinking milk"? Because the original sentence is "Las gatas beben leche" and, depending on the context, that could be either something the cats are doing right now or something they usually do. "The cats are drinking milk" implies necessarily that they're drinkng right now. Well, "Las gatas beben leche" could mean that they usually drink milk but they're not doing it at this very moment.
- 11
- 11
- 7
- 7
- 7
- 5
- 3
- 6
Not sure I got it, isn't something you do right now used in present continuous?
I understood this can either be "Cats drink milk" or "The cats drink milk", and judging by recent alternative suggestions also "The cats are drinking milk". Why is the last wrong then? Can't it be that the cats are currently drinking milk, even though they don't most of the time? (Either they usually drink something else like water, or they are drinking at this moment but not all the time)
- 12
- 12
I was very tempted to translate this as "Cats drink milk" which I'm pretty sure is correct- but didn't want to lose a heart, so gave them the translation I know they wanted. Does anyone know if Duo will accept "Cats drink milk" as a general statement- (as in "Does eat oats"?). Does a Spanish speaker know whether it would be correct to use in this context? Gracias.
- 11
- 9
- 8
- 4
- 3
- 2
- 2
"Cats drink milk" would be translated as "Gatos beben leche". In spanish that just doesn't sound right. It is "Los gatos beben leche".
- 16
- 14
- 13
- 11
- 10
- 10
- 8
- 6
I put this in but it didn't accept it. Perhaps 'Cats drink milk' should be 'El gato bebe leche' in the singular - but I'm only going by analogy with Italian.
- 11
- 11
- 7
- 7
- 7
- 5
- 3
- 6
I really wish there was a word for a female cat in English. I mean, a female dog is a bitch, but I was only taught the masculine form of dogs("perros", so I guess the female is "perras"...?), so I have no use in the English female form for now.
I want to be able to let Duo know I understand this is a female noun, and that I can tell the difference; right now even if I don't know the difference between "gatos" and "gatas" I get this right. I don't like not being able to learn from my mistakes.
- 25
- 8
I noticed cats and dogs use masculine/feminine names. Most of the other animals don't? Is there a reason?
- 14
- 14
- 14
- 8
- 6
- 2
- 2
- 2
I was also wondering about this. Everyone seems to be more hung up on what cats should and shouldn't eat.
- 25
- 8
Now that I'm further along, I think that it is because cats and dogs are pets. I realize that many other animals are pets now but since language goes way back I'm guessing it's just something from long ago that just stays with the language.
- 25
- 8
No. I know my friend that is a Spanish teacher told me there are more. Of course I can't remember them.
- 14
If you remember to ask the next time you see your friend, I'd be interested to know what they are. (I'm always looking for patterns.)
- 25
- 8
Animals In the case of languages which have masculine and feminine genders, the relation between biological sex and grammatical gender tends to be less exact in the case of animals than in the case of people. In Spanish, for instance, a cheetah is always un guepardo (masculine) and a zebra is always una cebra (feminine), regardless of their biological sex. To specify the sex of an animal, an adjective may be added, as in un guepardo hembra ("a female cheetah"), or una cebra macho ("a male zebra"). Different names for the male and the female of a species are more frequent for common pets or farm animals, e.g. English cow and bull, Spanish vaca "cow" and toro "bull".
- 25
- 8
http://spanish.about.com/od/nouns/a/gender-animals.htm
I decided to look it up. Not a comprehensive list. I thought she told me about horses but I thought I was remembering wrong since no one says anything on here about it.
does this program generally use groups of females when normally you'd learn them as groups of males/mixed groups? Por ejemplo: Las gatas, Nosotras...etc. ??
Um I put "The cats drink milk" but the "k" didn't show up until AFTER the answer was revealed and it counted it wrong... but in the end, I got it right. But I lost a life. So... yay?
I wrote "thecats drinnk milk". I am so maddd!! Seriously! Just a bunch of typos, I can't pass my lesson!
- 11
- 11
- 7
- 7
- 7
- 5
- 3
- 6
I feel you bro, it happens to me too! And it's mostly because of the keyboard, sometimes the keys don't work. :(
It is so that you can be refreshed during a lesson and don't forget anything. They tend to focus on a single word for most the lesson, so they pop up two of the same questions as a refresher to help you remember. Hope I helped!!