"Ένα κορίτσι, μία γυναίκα."
Translation:A girl, a woman.
31 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
In the nominative case ένας is for the male, μία is for the female and ένα is for the neuter genre.
In this sentence ένα κορίτσι is considered to be neuter and not female genre, although a girl is a female. It's a Greek irregularity ;)
987
Same thing happens in German. "Mädchen", despite meaning "girl", is neuter instead of feminine since most (if not all) nouns ending in "-chen" are neuter.
It's also neuter in Dutch (meisje - a cognate with German Mädchen) and masculine in Irish.
Same in Bulgarian, boy and girl are neuter (probably because they are considered children).
- 1103
It's interesting that in my language - Slovak which is a Slavic language, the word for girl "dievča" is also neuter.
so is in Czech, but Jarko, I think both Czech and Slovak, have this strange phenomenon: little girl is either neuter (dievča, děvče) or feminine, even a newborn (holčička) BUT it seems to me that for the boys we have only masculine (kluk, chlapec, chlapeček). A bit of gender inequality? [BTW, gender spells gender, not genre, Theo]
It's not an irregularity, it's just that grammar gender it's not the same as human gender.
If you google "Βικιλεξικό"+(insert verb you want to find), you'll find its declension (for the more common ones, at least). It's the Greek Wiktionary.
- 1675
Maybe it helps if I also explain why these nouns are neutral in German and Dutch despite describing a feminine object. It is because of the diminutive, which is a marker to make it smaller. In Dutch there is also a form without this marker "de meid" which gets the feminine article. The more common form, however, is "het meisje" which has the neutral form because of describing a "small" girl. Leaving out the diminutive, practically, only happens in expressions like "grote meid" (big girl). In German it would be even rarer to say Mädchen without the diminutive -chen.
This is comparable with the Spanish -ito
Poco
Poquito
I am still new to Greek, but I guess the same applies here.
Well.. why is not use ένα γυναίκα. Is A girl, A woman. Why μία at the second one? Ain't μία for quantity?
Ένα is used with neuter nouns, μία is used with feminine nouns. Κορίτσι is neuter but γυναίκα is feminine.
Please read the other comments on this page.
This and a lot more is explained in the Tips and notes. .
Some simple hints to get you started:
1 Always read the comments before posting.
2 Read the Tips & notes, on the first page of each lesson you’ll see an TIPS. Click on that.
3 Read the Drop-down hints. Pass your cursor over a word and a list of words will appear. The top word/phrase is usually the best choice. Or go to the top of the page and click MORE you’ll see a dictionary; just type the word.
4 Use the Report options at the foot of the exercise page to Report issues such as **My answer should be accepted.” etc Then be sure to leave a comment on the Discuss Forum
These are the official Duolingo guidelines which you should read.c.
https://www.duolingo.com/guidelines And these will answer lots of questions about how Duo works. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8000024
If you have questions just ask.
I would like to point out that point 2 is not present for users who only use the app. The same applies to the guidelines; lest the user is also (or only) using Duolingo via a computer browser, they will not know about these things.
κορίτσια => girls "τα κορίτσια" = the girls
You will become accustomed to these in a short time. Use these to help you:
TIPS TO MAKE LEARNING EASIER and EFFECTIVE + HOW TO REPORT A PROBLEM
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/22424028
they will help you:
1.Find the correct translation (Drop Down Hints)
2 find explanations for grammar and vocabulary....(Tips & notes)
3 Show you what to do if your sentence is rejected or you have another problem.
Also, check out the Greek Forum with many more resources…...
https://forum.duolingo.com/topic/936
-