"Мальчик видит курицу."

Translation: The boy sees the hen.

[IberiusPre]

Why is it 'the hen' and not 'a hen'?

[TheFinkie]

Could be either.

[Tuxsanov]

"the child sees the hen" I think we can use child as "malchik" isn't it??

[deactivated user]

Ма́льчик is a 'boy', 'child' is ребёнок (not sure how it's written in the transliteration used here; rebyonok?).

[Robert_Andersson]

In the transliteration used on Duolingo, «Ма́льчик» is written «mal'chik» and «Ребёнок» is written «Rebenok» (since both «Е» and «Ё» is transcribed to «E»).

[wowadjan]

Буквой Ё пренебрегают и пишут Е

[OanaSinzia1]

And for baby you will use ребёнок as well?

[deactivated user]

We have a word «младе́нец» 'baby, infant', but of course there's nothing wrong with using the word «ребёнок» about babies.

[ILF17]

I still don't understand how one can know where we must translate the object with a definite or an indefinite article - "sees the/a' whatever object. Can sy please explain? Thanks in advance.

[6_Tunes]

Hmm hen is translated into петух not курица

[Theron126]

No, it's the other way around - "hen" is "курица", "петух" is "rooster".

[Phobos_Raven]

Hen is a bird, chicken is a food or chick. When we say in cafe, for example "Я хочу курицу", it translated as "I want Chicken"

[NikolasPre1]

Is 'the boy is seeing the chicken' wrong? Duolingo apparently thinks so.

[fof017]

In English this sounds like the boy is in a romantic relationship with the chicken. You'd nearly always say "The boy sees the chicken".

[Ryan493060]

The verb to smoke is курить , so chicken must sound like a verb...

[deactivated user]

Indeed, ку́рица 'chicken, hen' sounds similar to ку́рится 'is smoked', a form of кури́ть 'to smoke'.

In careful speech, ку́рится would be pronounced with long ц, like ку́рицца, while ку́рица is pronounced with short ц. But this distinction is not always observed, especially in fast speech.

There are puns based on this similarity, for example:

— Официа́нт, это ку́рица? 'Waiter, is this chiken?' [pronounced same as это ку́рится? 'is this [to be] smoked?']
— Нет, э́то ку́шается. 'No, this is [to be] eaten.'

[Alex47955]

Free-typed "the boy sees a chicken" first time I got this question. Marked incorrect. Then Duo gives me fhe same sentence later as a fill-in-the-blank exercise. Accepted answer is "the boy sees a chicken"

[deactivated user]

I think it should be chicken not just a hen

[AhmadGhaem]

The sound for the isolated word корицо sounds like "kooyetso" to me.