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- "Такси уже стоит возле гостин…
54 Comments
I completely agree.
"The taxi is already near the hotel" is something I could say on the phone form the taxi, on my way to a rendezvous at the hotel, or else looking at my phone app tracking the taxi arrival in real time. Both the Russian sentence and your suggested translation rule this scenario out.
254
Interesting note.... Both taxi and cab are short for the full original word "taxicab". Famously people try to say the word taxi is an exception to the rule that words almost never end in i in english.
1398
The sentence is correct as Duolingo has presented it.
Because of возле, гостиница must become genitive singular: гостиницы. Genitive singular гостиницы just happens to match nominative plural. :) That is actually one of the nice things about regular feminine nouns - nominative plural and genitive singular match forms.
Genitive plural is гостиниц.
1398
This sentence, "Такси уже стоит возле гостиницы," refers to singular taxi instead of plural taxis. Thus, we would say, "A taxi is..." or "The taxi is...."
Granted, in Russian, такси is non-declinable - which means that whether I was referring to multiple or singular taxis, I would always use the word такси. See declension table here. However, if there were multiple такси, then I suspect I would use the word стоят - see conjugation table here. Он/такси стоит, while они/такси стоят.
You are correct. See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0 for confirmation.
However, возле takes genitive, which is the same as the nominative plural....
1398
From this discussion page which we are on, I hear гостиницы. You may indeed have heard some questionable audio on some of the exercises - it happens. If you plainly hear -ца instead of -цы, I recommend that you report the audio as incorrect.
Here is duo's dictionary entry, with audio, for гостиницы, and here is their entry for гостиница. The shift in sound is subtle, but it exists.
502
Why is it marked wrong to put "already" at the end of the English sentence. Many examples in DL where this sort of placement seems arbitrary
Actually, it can be either, depending on the rest of the sentence. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0 shows that it's genitive singular, or a couple of plural options.
In this case, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B5 shows that "возле" needs the genitive case, so it's just one hotel here.
423
Quite! See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B5 for confirmation, if any be needed....
577
For I don't know how many lessons and quesions I have been using 'cab' with no problem. Suddenly in this lesson it gets marked wrong. what kind of software is Duolingo using?
My assumption is that Duolingo is using regular expressions to match our free-form inputs for scoring. I've wondered about the course authors' view before: it wouldn't be fun to enter all alternatives in one giant regular expression but it would be mean beyond belief to not provide a way to input regular expressions at all (ie require every allowed alternative to be listed directly).
For this sentence I would expect the regular expression to look like, at least in part:
^the (taxi|cab) is already (near|by|at) the hotel$ ^the (taxi|cab) is (near|at|by) the hotel already$
And so on.
When a user submits a new suggested translation there is probably an interface for "add this specific sentence" and probably a way to edit the regular expressions directly.
It's inevitable that less-common words won't be accepted everywhere. If you're sure of your translations then hit the report button. Sometimes my suggestions are accepted the next day and sometimes it's months later.