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- "Ana mănâncă un canar."
93 Comments
I thought the same thing. Unfortunately, as you probably now know, it turns out later that Ana is, in fact, a human. "Goodnight Duolingo."
I was expecting it to be a cognate with the French canard "duck", but nope... apparently in Romania they eat canaries...
1868
Unfortunately, the Romanian word for duck (rață) comes from serbo-croatian roots! But don't give up, there are plenty of animal names that have common roots with the other Romance languages...
Serbo-croatian? I am a native speaker, and duck is patka in serbo-croatian. Don't see how is that connected with rață....
- 1868
Well, the Romanian DEX refers to raca as a likely origin and so does the English wiktionary...
http://www.webdex.ro/online/dictionar/ra%C8%9B%C4%83
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ra%C8%9B%C4%83
Maybe you can tell us the difference between raca and patka.
Raca is Slovenian. Didn't know that either. That is a probable South Slavic influence.
Another word for hamster is 'hârciog', that is the word for hamster that Memrise taught me... I don't know which is more common.
In Hungarian we use hörcsög (pronounced almost like hârciog) all the time. I cannot tell for 100% sure for Romanian but Wikipedia uses hârciog too so I would go with that.
Poor canary! Well... this sounds funny for a canary like me (in Canary Islands the people is known as "canarios"). Btw... this romanian course is quite original in the vocabulary (the animals and food were very different compared to other Duo courses).
- 1686
You may not know, but is not the canary bird that gives its name to Canary Islands. When first explorers got there they found the islands full of dogs, so they name it so (dog=canis). There is some debate actually, some assume that the dogs could not get there, and the name in fact came from seals (Lat: canis marinus, sea dog).
And yes, romanian girls eat everything! Beware! :P
You're right. The "can" from Canary islands is not from "canary" but "canis" (dog). In fact, the Canary flag has 2 dogs. But the demonym for canary people is called "canario", exactly like the yellow bird, that is also called canario in spanish. A canary woman would be a "canaria".
Actually, Anna is a language teacher dedicated to Chomsky's approach, going to great lengths to make sure you'll really absorb that grammar from unusual combinations - Let's hope that canary will stick, too (with that form of eating in third person)
Can happen in Romania people are starving especially in the winter. Maybe she didn't eat for a few days and no one in town would give her anything. So she went home and was looking at that bird like f### it Im going to make ciorba de perisoare from you my feathery friend.
Of course THIS is the one that has comments on it and not "hamsterul vorbește romăna." Hm...
I lived in Bucharest for 6 years and traveled through out the country. I never saw canary on any menu be it at a restaurant or home cooked.
- 1868
Unfortunately, the Romanian word for duck (rață) comes from serbo-croatian roots!
Edited: According to AmarPr, it is most likely Slovenian roots. So, let's make it Slavic roots!
- 1868
In English, there are jokes and expressions about "Cats eating canaries" that go back to 1800s. For example, see:
https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/cat-that-ate-the-canary/
What the author(s) of the sentence had in mind is for them to explain...
- 977
2018-09-27 Really, Duo, you're going to mark me completely wrong for spelling Ana as "Anna"?
That's bad luck. I spelt it the same way, and wasn't marked wrong, but was shown the alternative spelling of Anne. Hmm.
- 623
It's possible they might have seen the post by @GScottOliver and added "Anna" as an alternative... but it also maybe depends on the format. If you are asked to translate it from English to Romanian or from Romanian to English, or whether you are writing down the Romanian you heard IN Romanian... But it's still a bit harsh, either way.
I rrally want to go to a Romanian restaurant - Cat followed by mustard ice cream on the menu
- 975
I thought maybe it was carne (which I know isn't an animal). Humans do not eat canaries!
- 601
I hope when people learn English they don't get similar sentences. What a peculiar sentence to learn!
First Anna talks to a chicken and now she's eating a canary.... I wonder if she's ok..
Ana really has issues... First "Ana vorbește cu un pui" and now she's eating a canary...
