"Angalienda Serengeti angaliona twiga"

Translation: If he had gone to the Serengeti he would have seen the giraffes

[aboutpurpo]

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."

[dbriggs831]

it either needs to be 'a giraffe' or 'giraffes' for the English to sound nice. Also, 'the Serengeti' sounds far better to me.

[LyleTalbot]

this English translation is awkward. you wouldn't say "have seen giraffe"

[juryrigging]

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.

[micmic54416]

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.

[dbriggs831]

Using 'giraffe' in that way doesn't sit well with me

[LindaPasza]

exactly. "would have seen giraffes" would be very awkward to this native American english speaker. Don't know about UK?

[Catriona28475]

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!! ; )

[CarelSchmit]

People don't talk about "the Serengeti" they refer to it as just "Serengeti".....

[Catriona28475]

I wonder if it depends which people. Several people here have commented that they would use "the".

[Bianca810694]

Nothing against using THE Serengeti or just Serengeti... it's not an English course... it should be accepted in both ways.

[Branjabs]

I have tried to input this sentence twenty times. I give up.

If he had gone to Sengereti he would have seen the giraffes

[Ivoryblossum]

Is there something about the grammar here that it needs to translated as "If I had gone... I would've" rather than "If I went ... I woud've"?

[machieng]

I don't know that 'If I went' is actually conditional tense, I think it's applied more to future hypothetical situations. I can't find any cited articles on it, but here's a discussion about it:

https://www.quora.com/What-grammar-rules-apply-to-propositions-e-g-If-I-go-went-will-would-you-follow