"They live on the island for years."
Translation:Ele trăiesc de ani de zile pe insulă.
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1091
Did you ⛿ report the missing version when it was refused? There are thousands of learner forums like this, and the course contributors cannot monitor them all. But when you report a missing version (“my answer should have been accepted”) they are notified directly.
- 634
Really? If others report this as often as I do, the course cintributors must be very busy indeed.
- 1975
Sometimes in Romanian we say ani de zile or luni de zile instead of just ani or luni.
If it would have been They live on the island for months. you could translate it as Ele traiesc de luni pe insula. but it wouldn't be clear whether you're saying months or Monday, and we would probably assume it is Monday.
So my guess is that in order to make it clear we are talking about months, we say luni de zile and it perhaps got transfered to ani de zile too without any benefit that I can think of.
I think you'd usually say it in English like this: "They've been living on the island for years".
- 1755
Is it normal to put time information before location in Romanian? i.e. would Ele traiesc pe insula de ani de zile sound unnatural?
- 1813
The proposition does not require the definite article (which is implied), unless the noun is qualified eg by an adjective (so the translation of eg "on the big Island" would have required the "insula" form.
- 1091
Why is “on the island” translated by “pe insulă”, not by “pe insula?” Wouldn't the former be translated to English as “on an island” (any)?
Please see DavidONeil4's post. That should have been the reply to your question.
- 1813
Thanks to Lurch for noting I posted in the wrong place. Post copied here for convenience: The proposition does not require the definite article (which is implied), unless the noun is qualified eg by an adjective (so the translation of eg "on the big Island" would have required the "insula" form.
- 856
Ele trăiesc pe insulă de ani de zile. Ele de ani de zile trăiesc pe insulă. Ele pe insulă trăiesc de ani de zile, all is correct in Romanian language.
- 70
aristos9: And, my translation was: "Ei trăiesc de ani de zile de pe insulă." Shouldn't that be accepted as well?
- 1091
Your variant is the only one here that uses “de” before “pe insulă.” Is there a particular reason for that? It sounds a bit like “from on the island.”
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Renardo_11: I used Duo's dropdown menu and discovered "de pe insulă" was one of the possible options.
- 1091
“trăiesc” means that they spend most or all of their time on the island; the basic meaning is “they spend (part of) their life.” “locuiesc” emphasizes that they have their home on the island; they might, however, work, go to school etc. elsewhere. This can be expressed in English by “to dwell” but normally “to live” is used for both meanings.
“a trăi” can also be used to express how long a person lives: A trăit 70 de ani = he lived for 70 years (without saying where; it's just that 70 years passed between his birth and his death). “a locui” cannot be used for that; you would have to indicate where his home was. A locuit la Cluj 15 de ani = he lived in Cluj for 15 years (and then he went elsewhere).
Other languages have, like Romanian, separate verbs for the two meanings:
- French: habiter ↔ vivre
- German: wohnen ↔ leben
- Czech: bydlit ↔ žít