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- "ארנב ונחש הם חיות."
55 Comments
No. You need the copula (in this case "הם") when you are saying a noun is another noun.
A copula is basically a linguistic term for "equal sign" used between words to equate one thing with another.
- A cow is an animal.
- A cat is a pet.
- A duck is a bird.
Isnt the translation A rabbit and a snake are animals
They wrote A rabbit and snake are animals
We just learned to prefer זה to הוא In a similar sentence in sg.
זבוב זה לרק
Does plural change this idea again ? Or can you still construct this sentence with זה or possibly its plural form
? אלה
You should not prefer זה to הוא even in those other excercises. In formal Hebrew one uses only הוא, while זה would be considered inappropriate; in spoken Hebrew both sound fine (I guess I would tend to say הוא, but not sure).
Agree, in plural it's less appealing, though still sometimes OK, to say אלה. A safer bet is always הם or הן.
Yes, I feel the plural has less of a specialization of הם for human subjects but you can still use אלה
Interesting how "הם" is used here and not "הן". The first part of the sentence determined the gender, not the last.
In this case "הם" is used because at least 1 of the animals is masculinized (here both of the rabbit and the snake are male). הן is used when all of a group are female
That's what I thought, but then why does חיות have the female plural ending, rather than ים?
This is another odd sentence, sounds like the combination of a rabbit with a snake makes animals. How would you say "A rabbit and a snake are both animals." ?
ארנב ונחש הם שניהם חיות The odd feeling you get is ultimately related to the fact that Hebrew doesn´t have an indefinite article thus the singular has more of a tendency to represent the species (as opposed to English where the singular without an article represents the product of the animal as in "rabit and snake make good pelts")
Not odd in Hebrew, I have no doubt every Hebrew word and sentence in this course is accurate, but the problem lies with the English translations. Your above explanation about "rabbit and snake make good pelts" made perfect sense. The problem I've been having, as an English speaker trying to learn Hebrew from scratch, is that when the English translations are odd, I'm not sure if it's because the translations themselves are inaccurate, i.e. made with typos, or are as close to literal as possible. "A rabbit and snake are animals" must be a typo. Either both animals should have indefinite articles, "A rabbit and a snake" , no articles (referring to your pelt explanation) "Rabbit and snake", or they should both be plural "Rabbits and snakes."
My feeling from Duolingo in general is that they usually opt for the closest translation possible, word order and form wise as opposed to exact semantic meaning, which is indeed sometimes not a good natural translation of the concept, but its just a tendency and sometimes it goes the other way.
They still need articles they left out the "a" before snake. I know it's a mistake but we're learning so even little errors can be confusing. (They usually make bigger grammatical errors causing more confusion).
Bunny is a word normally used by or speaking to children. Or adults wanting to sound cute.
Why is the plural of 'animals' חיות but in 'pets' it's חיית מחמד? Are the animals in the Hebrew word for 'pets' seen as female or is it just some other form?
Not sure about the English here. Normally when you say something like "a wife and mother", with only one "a", it implies that the same subject is being discussed, i.e. in this case one woman who is both a wife and a mother.
What do I do (or where report) if my Hebrew DuoLingo keyboard doesn't work right? Here I was supposed to translate the sentence from English and the help "keyboard" appeared but when I tried to type there were only English letters.
I found this too - with the picture options. Since the box doesn't say "Type in Hebrew", the Duolingo keyboard doesn't activate.
The only way I found was to switch my PC keyboard from English to Hebrew for that answer (i.e. the way I had to type in Hebrew before I started using the Duolingo keyboard).
That's really sad... I copy from a virtual keyboard somewhere else but it's really inconvenient. And sometimes, as I noticed, there is a "Type in Hebrew" inscription but nothing happens as well.
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Having similar problems. My keyboard worked perfectly until I cleared out all my browsing data and cookies. Then it only wrote English. I can't work out a way to deal with the problem properly but at a later date when I cleared the browser but not cookies my keyboard suddenly started writing in Hebrew again... all the time! Now if I want to type an English answer I have to write in capitals. It's much better than no Hebrew at all but a little strange. Anyway my point is clearing your browser history may improve the situation and if you find a proper fix please let me know.
I wrote, a bunny and a snake they are animals. Why is this incorrect? Thanks!
In English we don't say "A rabbit and snake are animals". Should be either a rabbit and a snake, or better the rabbit and the snake
Actually a snake is a reptile, not an animal. A rabbit and a snake are lunch buddies. slurp
Why was it wrong when i put "A rabbit and a snake, they are animals.", for this translation? Isn't the הם supposed to be "they"?
I think it's correct, but a bit stretched... הם is a personal pronoun ("they"), but also a copula ("are"), and in this Hebrew sentence it's much more naturally to interpret it as a copula. Your English suggestion is kind of like two sentences, "rabbit and snake (pause) - they are animals" - I'd use the same Hebrew words for this, but it's a much less natural reading.
