"The youth is cheerful."

Translation: Młodzież jest wesoła.

[conor.raff]

so "youth" is always female gender, even when its a male?

(My answer was "Młodzież jest wesoły" and it got marked wrong)

[immery]

it is collective noun, like "rodzina"( or not, there is no plural) and it is always feminine.

[conor.raff]

Dzięnki na odpowiedż!

[immery]

psst dzięki :)

Nie ma za co.

[Vengir]

There is plural for „rodzina” – „rodziny”. Or did I misunderstood your comment?

[immery]

I thought there is no plural of młodzież, but according to wsjp.pl there is, I just never heard it.

[grettaelizabeth]

After reading the comments here and on another exercise in this lesson, I am still very confused. If młodzież is always a collective noun, then I think the English translation should be "The youth are cheerful" - because we are talking about a group of young people - but maybe I still don't understand.

[Jellei]

Both 'is' and 'are' are accepted, it is an American vs British English difference.

[grettaelizabeth]

You are correct that there is a difference in handling collective nouns between American and British English. However, as in all things grammatical, it's a bit more complicated than that.

This blog article explains it well: http://englishasitisbroken.blogspot.com/2007/09/collective-nouns-what-are-they-family.html

Toward the end of the article they discuss collective vs. countable nouns, giving youth as a specific example. This Duolingo exercise is using youth as a collective noun, so it should only take the plural verb in English. By giving "The youth is cheerful" as the translation, you are implying that "the youth" is referring to a single individual.

[Jellei]

Alright, in that case, you are right and "The youth are cheerful" will now be the default sentence.