"הייתְ באמריקה כבר?"
Translation:Have you been to America already?
24 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"Were you already in America?" This is entirely dependent upon context. This translation does also make sense.
I agree. A mom might say “I’m from China, and my son was born three years ago.”
“Were you already in America? When he was born, I mean. In that case, your son is an American citizen.”
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.
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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.
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".
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"Where were you last week? You missed a good event."
"I've been in Japan for awhile, and next week I'll be in Taiwan."
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WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING?
Nikud doesn't change the translation one bit, so it doesn't really matter.
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Some people use all caps on their PC so that they can toggle between Hebrew and English just by pressing the Caps Lock key. They may be motivated by exercises that require frequent switching between keyboards.
For the benefit of 71wI (מיכאל), it takes only one more keystroke (2 instead of 1) to switch keyboards by using [Windows][Space] or [LeftAlt][Shift], and then there's no need to use all caps on a discussion page.
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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!!
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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.
How would you differentiate between "Have you already been to America?" and "Were you already in America?"
I don’t think you can differentiate between these, because modern Hebrew has only one simple past form, which gets translated many different ways into English depending on context.
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Assuming you didn't have that typo in your actual answer, then I'd say it's worth using the flag/report button to say that it should have been accepted. A person saying that would make it clear that it's a question, and the question mark suffices in written text; but it's a judgement call for Duo, since punctuation marks seem to be ignored (as far as I can tell).
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Now I notice your use of "before" instead of "already", which is another judgement call. Duo translates כבר as "already, yet", while קודם seems to be the word to translate as "before".
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