89 Comments
I wrote "I hate the Mondays" and got it wrong. But thought of Office Space and giggled as I wrote it :P
In Spanish, you use(el, la, los, las) even when you are talking about something in a general sense/generalization.
Yep, my hovering hints offered 'Mondays' (i.e. without 'the') for 'los Lunes'.
Nice to see Duo showing this distinction.
Why is it that sometimes we HAVE to translate the article, but sometimes we don't? It makes logical sense for me to say I hate Mondays, but I wrote the Mondays because every. other. time. I have to translate the article.
Say the direct translation, then ask yourself if that's how you would say it in English.
"Odio los lunes" = "I hate the Mondays." --> Do we say "I hate the Mondays" in English? No, we just say "I hate Mondays."
"No leemos durante la cena." = "We don't read during the dinner." --> Does it make sense to say "We don't read during the dinner" in English? Nope, we just say "We don't read during dinner."
While this is a valid explanation for Spanish to English, it is still difficult to know when to do it when gojng from English to Spanish.
Thats what I was thinking. That explanation doesn't answer the question of why the articles seem to need/not need translated in a seemingly haphazard way, which was what the original question asked.
In my experience with questions and such, you use the article+plural form when you're talking about all of them as a group, but you use modifiers if they're referring to specific dates/things. In English we do drop the article, but on the other hand we don't usually say "that person knows the cars" unless we mean specific cars. We would say "that person knows cars". That's not including different verbs one can use, of course.
There seems to be a lot of things in Spanish that are contextual, and vocabulary differ from region to region. Just have confidence you'll adapt if you actually go somewhere.
I think in this sentence 'los' is used to indicate that its plural. The days of the week don't have a separate plural form in Spanish. So without 'los' this could also have meant "I hate Monday". Whereas after putting 'los' its clear that its plural so its "I hate Mondays"
You always have to use the article when using words such as Gustar, Odiar, Encantar, to describe things in general.. If you want to say 'I like monkeys' You MUST say 'me gustan los monos'.. (Even though it's just referring to monkeys in general) It's just the way it is! Languages are not always logical..
En español los días de la semana siempre van precedidos de artículo, solo hay una excepción; que no vayan precedidos por el verbo ser. Ej: hoy es lunes
Office Space is the obvious reference, but this also made me think of the Boomtown Rats.
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Me too, if they did "I don't like Mondays." ("No me gustan los lunes," I guess.)
When Odie dug up Duo's eggs by accident. The following scenes included a near miss, several attempts to eat a certain owl, and Garfield saying something in Italian.
Here for the Garfield comments. Pleasantly surprised by the Office Space comments.
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I guess that duolingo wants us to understand "el" (singular) and "los" plural.
Is this sentence on every course because it was on the swedish one too
This woman pronounces "d" & "b" and several other consonants ALL as "v". I find myself constantly trying all of them to find a word, and frequently failing . . . it is frustrating. I doubt all Spanish speakers pronounce most hard vowels as "v" . . . . but feel I won't have a chance of understanding the spoken word if they do. --- Frustrated
I hate Monominonsday. And i could really go for some enchiladas (Gazorpazopfield)
