"Some women are taller than men."
Translation:Unele femei sunt mai înalte ca bărbații.
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no, if you Google it, you'll find that only decât is correct for inegality, but apparently Romanians use ca anyway. (Same is true in German, where it is supposed to be "größer als", but regionally people say "größer wie" anyway). And you'll even find English speakers who falsely say "taller as" - so this logical problem seems to be quite universal...
I was asking the same in another example because this hasn't been mentioned anywhere yet.
In deneral: "ca" = "as"; "decât" = than. Thus, "la fel de înalte ca bărbații" ("as tall as the men"); "mai înalte înalte decât bărbații" ("taller than the men"). However, in Romanian, you can say both "taller than the men" and "taller as the men" and they are both valid and mean the exact same thing. Thus, "mai înalte înalte decât bărbații" = "mai înalte înalte ca bărbații" = "taller than the men", there is no difference; although some purists insist that "ca" should not be used so broadly, my understanding is that the majority of Romanians ignore this prohibition and consider the usage standard. (But notice that even in Romanian, you can never say "as tall than": "la fel de înalte decât bărbații" is impossible.)
Why two i's on bărbații? If so, where is the "the"? For the women is doesn't do this so it throws me for a loop. EDIT: It's really crushing me when I cycle back to it, I will have to remember it.
Good question.
I am not a linguist, but this is how I see it.
”unii/unele”=”some” and it is the plural form of the indefinite pronoun ”unul/una”.
”un/o”=”an/a” (the indefinite article singular form) ”niște”=”some”, it is the plural for the indefinite article ”a/an”.
”Un, o, una, unul” in English all mean ”one”.
Some examples =niște exemple:
I see some people over there. = Văd niște oameni acolo. Some fruits are poisonous. = Unele fructe sunt otrăvitoare. I need some money. = Am nevoie de niște bani. He saw some girls. = A văzut niște fete. Some girls had blue eyes. = Unele fete aveau ochi albaștri. Some animals can fly. = Unele animale pot zbura. There are some animals in his garden. = Sunt niște animale în grădina lui. Do you have some alcohol?= Ai niște alcool? Some alcohols are just for technical use. = Unii alcooli sunt doar pentru uz tehnic.
I really don't understand why you need to use the definite plural of bărbat here. This would translate to English as 'some women are taller than THE men' which you wouldn't say logically. Can someone please explain why it's not bărbați instead?
I don't know, just started wondering for my native language Hungarian, in case it helps at all... because in Hungarian, both with an article and without an article would be just plausible and just meh. xD
Is "men" here more "some men (if we choose well)" or more "men in general, average men"? If I assume it's the second, using an article actually makes sense because talking about a concept in general requires an article in Romanian (just like in Hungarian).
decat looks similar to Spanish " de que " at least in the countries I live, in popular speech.
