"Этому мальчику нужно больше спать."

Translation: This boy needs to sleep more.

[supecakes]

Why not, this boy needs more sleep?

[chsemyonova]

I am wondering the same thing.

[WilmerEHen]

+1. What's wrong abiut it?

[IanKendric3]

My best guess: спать is used as an infinitive verb (to sleep) while your English answer is using sleep as an unaccountable noun. I'm new to language structure jargon, soooo...please correct me if I'm mistaken :-)

[BenYoung84]

Sleep in that context translates as сон.

[urihalpern]

What is этому ? why not это or этот.
What a complicated language.

[ObadiahSwi]

Dative case
"Кому?"
Who needs more sleep? This boy...
Therefore the subject is altered "Етому Мальчику"
If not... no subject is defined and it could be... Sleep needs more boy.

This is the case system as I understand it... but I am also just grasping this idea so I could be incorrect.

[dun867176]

Why is надо not correct? Instead of нужно

[Pierre733333]

" this boy needs more sleep" - is that bad english here ?

[chsemyonova]

No, that sentence is grammatically sound.

[ObadiahSwi]

"This boy should've more sleep." =revealed answer... WTF

[Jeffrey855877]

Abbreviating "have" like this (should've = should have) is only done when "have" is used as an auxiliary verb in a compound verb, such as "should have gone" or "should've gone". Even then, it's very colloquial English, and Duo shouldn't accept it even when correctly used.

[BenYoung84]

Duo has always been terrible at knowing when to contract.

[geneven]

Срать is an infinitive‚ so "to sleep more" is a better translation.

[E-chan.]

It's "спать"! You should never confuse р and п in this word! Believe me, you really shouldn't.

[Joseph_Pate]

In case anyone is wondering, I looked it up and "срать" means "to sh*t".

[Kreibich2]

whаt is the difference between надо and нужно? what grammatical rule says: you have to take this or that one. how can I find the right one without any context?

[dogomolo]

See this helpful video https://youtu.be/L5PV_h7YZ3Y