56 Comments
the voices in my head are loudest when i plant petunias,,,they tell me to kill, kill, kill:)
Exacty. In english one normally says: I can hear voices in the garden, meaning that he is listening to them right now. In spanish if you say: "Yo puedo oir voces" can mean two things:
-I am able to hear voices, because i have ears
-I might be hearing voices.=Podría estar oyendo voces..
But can never mean that you are hearing voices right now.. If you want to say that you say : Oigo voces. That is a bit confusing, i hope it got clarified. Sorry for my english, i am native spanish speaker
Quit apologizing. Your English was flawless. (at least according to 95% of people, Grammar Nazis need not apply). We knew what you were saying, we didn't need a translator, didn't have to re-read everything. I congratulate you. Apologizing only indicates you think you did something wrong. You didn't. :)
While snooker's post is very accurate and well thought out, it should be noted that the primary answer has changed since then.
I don't really see how can is also included as an answer. That is an additional helping verb.
Yep, IMO. Perhaps DL is trying to be forgiving here, but "puedo oir" is "I can hear," so when the time comes to learn about poder one can get confused. This is part of what I find frustrating about DL. Sometimes the desired answers are literal, sometimes very loose, sometimes so lacking in context it is hard to know what the "correct" answer is, sometimes the exact translations are acceptable in one place, but not another.
I think the "can" is fine, even though it is not required. It does not mean "able to" in this case, but merely denotes surprise. I do not know if poder is used the same way in Spanish.
Maybe the "can" is okay, but "I hear voices from the garden" should not be marked wrong.
That would be "Oigo voces del jardin" or "desde el jardin" if you are in the garden and that's where you hear the voices from.
Apparently DL has decided to agree with you.
The current primary answer is "I hear voices in the garden."
Sí, el jardín fue construido sobre los túmulos de las pueblos indígenas.
Pero, por qué se escriben [pueblos indígenas] en wikipedia? Es la palabra [pueblo] una palabra feminina?
I believe it's because "indígenas" is used for both masculine and feminine nouns (which is weird, usually the endings for adjectives change depending on gender and number). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ind%C3%ADgena
Well.. I don't think that is correct , "pueblo" is masculine always . And "indígenas" just complements the noun (pueblos) so it can't determine the article ( los/las/el/la) .Corrdct sentence : "... túmulos de los pueblos indígenas.
Good point.
I see that the wikipedia article here agrees with you: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblos_ind%C3%ADgenas_de_M%C3%A9xico
Los pueblos indígenas de México son las colectividades que asumen una identidad étnica con base en su cultura,
if DL wanted 'can' it should have used the verb 'poder' and also 'en el' translates as 'from' does it??? a very weird translation. translating verbs that are not there makes translation very difficult
1713
Agreed. To me this should just be I hear voices in the garden. Which to be fair is accepted but not given as the absolute correct answer.
This one is just crazy. First DL tells us there is an imaginary "can" in the sentence, then they say the voices come "from" the garden. Doesn't "en" mean "in" anymore?
I work in my garden quite often and I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I were standing in my garden and would say "I can hear voices in the garden." I can imagine being a distance from my garden and saying that.
If the voices do not in reality exist, then certainly psychosis should be considered.
You can hear them but in some languages we don't say "can". Like in my language - Bulgarian or in Spanish... For example instead of "Can you hear me?", we'd say "Do you hear me?".
So if if the Spanish for "I can hear voices in the garden," is "Oigo voces en el jardin," comó se dice, "I hear voices in the garden?" sin "can?"
I think that the traslation that's written might be an error. "Puedo oir"="I can hear", "oigo"="I hear".
I don't think the use of "can" is an error. It is very common usage when referring to something unexpected - in this case "voices in the garden".
If someone told me "I can see a dolphin near those rocks", I would in no way assume that they were boasting about the acuity of their eyesight, but rather their surprise at seeing a dolphin.
I suspect it is simply one of those things that exists in English, but has no equivalent in Spanish. I'm curious to know what a native Spanish speaker would make of "Puedo oír voces en el jardín".
True, I see your point, yet people also commonly express thst same thought without the "can". E.g. "Wait... I hear voices in the garden!", "Oh look! I see a dolphin by the rocks!" Most of the time Duo is quite literal with the "preferred" translation, so I find it odd that they added more words to this sentence. I'm also curious of what a native speaker thinks about this sentence though.
Yes, there are other ways of expressing surprise. Personally I use that "can" form a lot. I can only speculate as to DuoLingo's reasons (maybe to draw attention to the fact that English speakers do use "can" in this way). If I remember, I will try to ask my Spanish teacher about it next week.
Also you can say . " Escucho voces en el jardín " or " Yo escucho voces en el jardin "
Must be the faeries....little buggers skinny dipping in the bird bath....again!
I hear voices in my head, they council me, they understand. They talk to me.
Oigo voces en el jardín. Oigo voces en la casa. Oigo voces en el coche. Oigo voces en el baño. Oigo voces en toda la parte del mundo.
