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"How many boys does she have?" should really be accepted. In English we often times use "sons" and "boys" interchangably, especially within less formal context.
Correct but children with no implied relationship to "her." Hijos implies that the speaker is referring to children with a specific relationship to her, not generalized children.
@nadgerz - re: What if 'she' was a female dog?
I don't know why your question got voted down so heavily. It seems like a perfectly valid question. I'm standing there looking at a ❤❤❤❤❤ nurse her pups. I might struggle to ask how many puppies she has (cuz I'm too lazy to count their squirming little bodies).
This is only my guess and it's based on the Preposition Skill Set Lesson. Spanish has a way of dealing with animals, particularly if they are pets (I'm referring to the Spanish"personal 'a'".
I'm guessing is "sons", "daughters" and "children" would be replaced by different words that communicate "male puppies", "female puppies" and "male/female older offspring" in conjuction with personal 'a'.
Does that sound reasonable?
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Why is"ella" at the end of the sentence? I would write "Cuàntos hijos ella tiene?"
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Subjects typically go after the verb in Spanish questions: http://spanish.about.com/od/sentencestructure/a/sentenceorder.htm
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Think of it as "How many sons has she?" I think the subject moves to the end for many Spanish questions e.g. "Que comen los perros?" However, I'm still a beginner so I don't know for sure.
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You're sort of correct, in Spanish questions, subjects are place after the verb, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be at the end. http://spanish.about.com/od/sentencestructure/a/sentenceorder.htm
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In a real-world situation, you would have the context you need to know that..
If not? You could get more information..
But here we are just translating sentences to get a sense of sentence structure while building vocabulary.
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Because with out the assent mark, the meaning changes from how much, or how many to "as much as" example: cuanto (adverb) = as much as - Example: Come cuanto puedas. Eat as much as you can.
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The accent signifies it as a question word as opposed to one that is used in non-question contexts. Compare: cuánto vs. cuanto, cómo vs. como, que vs. qué and so forth.
@dkat - re: ...stress when it would stressed naturally?
Hola dkat. You noticed something very important. The Spanish language has accent marks that serve different purposes. In the case of the accent marks that you noticed, they fall on the part of the word that is naturally stressed. So they can't change anything regarding the pronunciation. So why are they there?
In this case, the accent marks are called orthographic accents. Check out this hyperlink.
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"Got" is used in a lot of informal contexts in English, it's not technically correct, but it's pretty common. "Got" is used many times in place of "have", so some may say "how many kids does she got?", but it's better to say "have".
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The verb is tener (meaning 'to have'), the ending changes depending on who you are talking about. _use tengo for 'I' _use tiene for 'he/she/it/you (formal)
When you say tengo it is you own. Tiene is you have. Like la personas teine el poder, and yo tengo un lapis.
The helping verb "does" is missing and "has" needs to be "have".
"How many sons does she have?"
It's poor english to say "How many sons has she got". I would think that "How many sons has she" should not be counted as an error.
If we add the sentence structure, "How many sons (children) does she have?" to this list, does any one of them break an English grammar rule.
What sounds correct to one person is subjective and varies from place to place in the larger English speaking world.
It's best to base the correctness of sentence construction on rules of grammar which are objective.
Are hijos and ninos interchangeable? I thought hijos referred strictly to boys while ninos could be gender neutral.
Hijos can refer to only the male offspring of a particular person or the combination of male and female offspring of a particular person. There is a lot of information in the word hijos.
Niños refers to male children in general or male and female children in general. We don't get the extra piece of information about the parent.
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We all have problems with this one lol ... look any one interested to learn togither?
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How many sons has she should be correct with the "got" redundant. What do others say?
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In English, we often have to include the words do / does / did when asking questions. If we do this, we conjugate do and use the base infinitive have, think, or whichever verb is needed. We place the do before the subject, often at the start of the sentence, and the base infinitive after the subject. For example: Do you like coffee? Does he prefer football or tennis? Did Susan enjoy her trip?
In the current case, we have one of the WH- questioning words. WH- words are generally used at the start of the sentence. The subject-verb order is reversed from when making a statement, so the subject goes after the verb.
How much is that? Why is the sky blue? Who is that man?
We had to translate Cuántos hijos tiene ella?
The two main standard ways of asking this in English are:
How many children has she?
How many children does she have?
Notice:
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only one verb is conjugated (have --> has, when it is the only verb, while do --> does, but then have remains unchanged.)
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the subject goes after the conjugated verb
Other examples:
How much does a single ticket cost?
When does train to Madrid leave?
What do your parents think about you moving away?
Why did Antonio decide to learn German instead of French?
Who did Belén meet for lunch?
Which colour (UK) / color (US) do you prefer - blue or green?
Finally, there is one other very common way of asking the original question in British English. As many other native speakers seem to regard it as incorrect, I have listed it separately:
How many children has she got?
I hope this answers your question.
~ native English speaker (UK and Ireland) and English teacher
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Nope.
"How many children does she have?" "Does she have (m)any children?" "How many children has she?"
The last example is the only construction where has should be used for the question. However, the answers:
"She has five children." "She does not have any children." "She doesn't have nearly enough!"
Basically if an auxillary verb (in this case "does") is used, have is used rather than has.
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You are probably right, but mixing has and have should result in a warning, not an error. It doesn't really mean that I have flaws in my spanish, only in my english.
HALF A HEART BUT DONE DIE DIE DIE CAUSE BABY TONIGHT DUOLINGO IS TRYING TO STEAL YOUR HEARTS!
