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- Topic: Russian >
- "Где деньги моих учеников?"
47 Comments
Hmm, not a big thing I guess but in the English answer it should be " students' " with an apostrophe (talking about the 'pick the right words from this selection' exercise here - don't know if that's already the answer in other exercises).
I'm amazed at how awkward this one is for me with that missing apostrophe. It's not just grammatical nitpicking, that little mark has a significant meaning, and I can't immediately see the "correct" answer in the set of words I've been given, even when I understand the Russian sentence.
1448
To be fair, if someone was keen enough on consuming their grandma that a simple grammatical mistake can set them off, you've got some bigger problems on your hands.
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In Russia we have an expression from a Soviet cartoon "В стране невыученных уроков" ("In the country of unlearned lessons"): Казнить нельзя помиловать! literal translation: execute not pardon. Казнить нельзя, помиловать! v Казнить, нельзя помиловать! (You can’t execute, have mercy! v Execute, no mercy!)
Same in Norwegian "Heng ham ikke, vent til jeg kommer!" (eng. "Hang him not, wait till I arrive!") where moving the comma before/after "ikke" (not/don't) makes all the difference for the poor guy...
I also stumbled. It helps me to mentally translate the genitive using "of", rather than using 's (eg "the money of the students").
Agreed. "my student's money" implies one student, "my students' money" implies multiple. It took me a good few seconds to figure out the answer the system wanted me to give, without the aposteophe.
I can confirm that there is an apostrophe there in the incubator. Any apostrophical problems in this sentence are due to automated Duo behavior which we don't have any control over.
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Thank you! I have explained this numerous times on various exercises where this comes up. Still people pointlessly complain about it.
How is it pointless? It's confusing, you may find yourself to believe you have the answer but find no confirmation from the available words.
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Because you're complaining to people that have no control over the matter (as Theron said). You might as well start complaining to the Duolingo mods about the bad weather in Chelyabinsk.
Finkie Baby - on the contrary it is you & Theron who are missing the point entirely. People of course make their complaints to the duolingo team - but also want to express their thoughts & feelings & observations to other users in a comradely manner as well as venting their frustration at the sometimes complete lack of any timely or appropriate response to irritating errors of grammar & context. To excoriate enthusiastic learners for the understandable activity of social interaction & comment amongst each other about the good the bad & the ugly of duolingo reveals a caste of mind that is both inappropriate & condescending & perhaps you as a seasoned & senior long term user of this fundamentally excellent but sometimes flawed language learning system should employ your influence with the powers that be in support of all users who ultimately fund the operation with rather more sympathy than the somewhat peremptory disdain you appear to project. Toodle Pip me Old China!
Katie - as with most of the others in this string - is correct. The apostrophe is required because it signifies the genetive or possession 'the money of my students' - regardless of whether it sounds awkward or not. True it's not idiomatic and would be regarded as quaint or awkward - but is correct and references to whom the money belongs. Principal problem with duolingo is that it is a software program written by Americans who of course think they speak English - which sadly is very far from reality!
Please don't tar all Americans with the same brush. Some of us are quite literate. (And I feel obliged to note that the notion that any one version of English is 'better' or 'worse' than another is simply not correct. They have merely evolved in different directions and will likely eventually become distinct languages from a common root, as the Romance languages have evolved from Latin.)
Get this, this is funny. I wrote "Where is my students' money?" And it corrected me, saying the correct answer is "Where is my students money?" But then it offered "Where is my students' money?" as "another correct solution." :-D
In English it is either "where is my students' money?" or "Where is the money of my students?", i.e., without an apostrophe in the latter phase.
"Where is my students' money?" is correct. "Where is the money of my students?" is awkward.
The answers in the incubator are correct, report a bug: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
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since the russian course has been known to not accept answers without quotation marks etc., it's quite annoying that the plural possessive is constantly marked wrong
OK -- It's been two years since people started complaining about the missing apostrophe. I'm chiming in to also ask that it be added. Please!!!!
The apostrophe is there and has always been there. If you're not seeing it, report a bug: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
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The way the Swedish Duolingo seems to solve the apostrophe question with the word bank type answers is to have a little square with an 's or an s' to put in after the word, rather than having the entire noun with an s on the end. So there is apparently some method within the DL formalism to achieve a solution to this apparently insurmountable problem!
I type in the same, word for word, including the apostrophe (') and I get error?
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
The answers we have entered are correct. All we can do at this point is report the bug until Duo fixes it.
I finally got through! The apostrophe needs to be at the end of the "s" not between the "s" and the "t"; meaning it is the money of all of the students not just one particular student. Caveat scholasticus!
Oh, yeah. The intricacies of English punctuation :-) There have been issues with Duo choking over punctuation though, including this sentence, so you know what to do if it happens again.
