"Limbile vechi sunt grele."
Translation:The old languages are hard.
14 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I know this is the unit about articles but Duolingo should let you omit the article in English, to stay true to the language
Do you really need the article here? I feel the Romanian sentence could translate as Old languages are hard, even though in Romanian you express generality with the definite form...
863
The point is you are not learning English, you are learning Romanian... and in order to do so you need to know how the sentences are constructed. It is important to translate directly to become familar with the format.
@debbocar: It's not important at any stage to learn the direct 1-on-1 translation of Romanian constructions, because the direct translation results into a construction that does not exist or is not used in English. In order to correctly understand when one needs to use the definite article suffix in Romanian, it is more helpful when one can notice a difference between the two languages' versions of a certain utterance
I join in this question, but also wonder why "grele" sounds like it is pronounced with three syllables. Oh, perhaps it is because the "r" is rolled!
It's only two syllables. The rolled r sound is pretty difficult for English speakers, but once you get the hang of it, it shouldn't add any extra syllables
So glad Spanish is my native language. I noticed Romanian words are often alphabetic (which helps me a lot) like Spanish and Portuguese except for the accents like "fată" or "cuțit".
You definitely don't need the English definite article here. If you're expressing a generality, it's always omitted.
Yes, it does. Since "grea/grele" can also mean "heavy," you could also use "sunt dificile" ("are difficult") or "dificile de învățat" ("difficult to learn"), which can remove some of the ambiguity.
