"יש לי אפרסק צהוב ואדום."
Translation:I have a yellow and red peach.
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421
The first three words mean "I have a peach". The next two words are adjectives that modify that one noun, that one peach, describing it as yellow and red.
Colours in Hebrew generally fit into the CaCoC mishkal; declined, it’s CCuCa, CCuCim, CCuCot. Examples:
- אָדֹם, אֲדֻמָּה, אֲדֻמִּים, אֲדֻמּוֹת = red*
- כתום, כתומה, כתומים, כתומות = orange
- סגול, סגולה, סגולים, סגולות = purple
- ורוד, ורודה, ורודים, ורודות = pink
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כחול, כחולה, כחולים, כחולות = blue
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The reason this adjective starts with CaC instead of CC is that א (as well as ה, ע, and usually ח) can’t have a shva, so it gets an epenthetic vowel. Furthermore, if the word starts with a sonorant (ר, ל, נ, מ) and a shva, the shva is usually pronounced like a segol.
There’s also an -ish struct, קְטַלטַל, e.g. כְּחַלְחַל ‘bluish’ (suffixes appended normally, not vowel or stress shifts).
You say that you guess a single peach is in view because “peach” isn’t in the plural form.
However, if the meaning of the sentence is I have a yellow and a red peach and you mean that you have two peaches, each of a different color, then you would not pluralize peach in English and probably not in Hebrew either.
Three people said that this sentence is talking about one peach. Elias asked how to say I have a yellow and a red peach. If by that he was asking how to say the equivalent of I have a yellow peach and a red peach, and danny answered that this two-peach sentence would be the same as the Duolingo sentence, then danny is saying that this sentence is ambiguous. (One or two peaches might be in view).
1214
How would you say "I have a yellow and a red peach."? Do you have to say "יש לי אפרסק צהוב ואפרסק אדום." or is there another way?
1545
No, what you wrote is incorrect. It makes no sense when translated literally. Since Hebrew doesn't have indefinite article, Elias's sentence would be the same as the one above.