"Angalienda Serengeti angaliona twiga"
Translation:If he had gone to Serengeti he would have seen the giraffes
13 Comments
I did report this, but also want to say that this is more natural to say, "If he had gone to THE Serengeti, he would have seen giraffes."
it either needs to be 'a giraffe' or 'giraffes' for the English to sound nice. Also, 'the Serengeti' sounds far better to me.
Could you please use the "report a problem" function to report awkward and wrong sentences? Reports are more likely to be seen by course moderators at this time.
I think in this case it's not awkward. With many animals the singular also acts as a plural ("collective singular"). It's especially evident with "fish" where you rarely see "fishes" but also with many savannah animals like wildebeest, buffalo, etc.
exactly. "would have seen giraffes" would be very awkward to this native American english speaker. Don't know about UK?
Reposting:
As a native British English speaker, I wouldn't use "giraffe" as a collective noun like "fish". I would say, "I saw fish, lions, tigers, and giraffes." (I would say "I saw wildebeest" though.)
I seem to have accidentally deleted the latest response. Here it is again:
LindaPasza:
Just looked it up in the dictionary: the plural can be either giraffe or giraffes, in either US or British English dictionary. I realized I tend to use either one, based on both context and position in the sentence. If there are rules, I doubt they are important enough to stress over!! ; )
People don't talk about "the Serengeti" they refer to it as just "Serengeti".....
I wonder if it depends which people. Several people here have commented that they would use "the".
