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- "הייתְ באמריקה כבר?"
16 Comments
"Were you already in America?" This is entirely dependent upon context. This translation does also make sense.
No. In English grammar you don't say, for instance: "Have you been in Japan", you say "Have you been to Japan" or "I've been to Japan last week".
1016
Prepositions don't always translate the same way when translating from one language to another.
From what I understand, היית would be a stative verb, and would require the preposition ב. On the other hand, if you wrote הלכת, נסעת, טסת, טיילת and so on - verbs of movement, then I guess you would use ל. But maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
Have you been to Amerita have you gone to traveled t0 A. Have you been in America could be you stopped in transit on your way elsewhere . I think Hebrew is more ambiguous in this case.
There is a bug in the system! It doesn’t let me pass through with a perfect translation! It seem to do with a inter language keyboard switch as the cursor won’t move left to right!!! Please fix it. Otherwise - you have an excellent program - I’m really enjoying it!!
- 1016
From what I understand, הלך is used for going, in the sense of walking, so I don't think this would work.
Actually, now that I saw closely what you wrote, you actually wrote - "have you walked IN America already". This means something completely different than the sentence we have here. I guess you meant to say "הלכת לאמריקה כבר" - that might be translated - going (walking) TO America.
Israelis I know, being accustomed to calling the United States "אמריקה" when speaking Hebrew, use the word "America" when speaking English in cases where an American would say "the United States" or "the US". Thus they greatly overuse the word "America" in English and don't sound like native English speakers. (At least not like Americans.) For related reasons, I think "Have you been to the United States already" and "Have you already been to the United States" should be accepted here.
- 158
How would you differentiate between "Have you already been to America?" and "Were you already in America?"
