"Eine Frau isst ein Ei."
Translation:One woman eats an egg.
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I'm not an expert in German, but I'm quite sure "a woman eats an egg" should be accepted as a translation. I would say that is the most straightforward translation. If it's not being accepted, I'd say someone at Duolingo has broken the translation table for German and English. In fact, at the top of this discussion page, I see the translation being given as exactly that, Translation: A woman eats an egg. Are you sure that's what you entered?
Why is 'Ich esse eine Orange', correct, which accusative, and 'Eine Frau isst eine Ei' incorrect, when it too is accusative, and both Orange and Ei are neuter?
slytherclaw is right, "Das Ei"
is neuter for some reason, maybe because you don't know what gender chicken comes out of an egg: male or female? :) so Egg is neuter in German. But "Die Orange"
is feminin to till its bones. In accusative, only masculine nouns become "ein + en = einen"
, "der + en = den"
.
'Einen' is the accusative masculine article. 'Ei' is a neuter noun, and so uses the accusative neuter article ('ein', the same as in nominative). 'Apfel' is a masculine noun, and so it's nominative article, 'ein', because 'einen'. Only the masculine article changes between nominative and accusative.
The situation is a little more complicated than this, and can be best described with a table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles . By the way, in accusative, "einen Apfel" (m), "ein Ei" (n), "eine Zeitung" (f). As for "an", that's an English word (of course, you shall properly translate your German sentences into English). But while in English, "an" vs "a" is dependent on the beginning of the next word, in German there are other things to take into account, the case and the genre of the words that follows the article.
In formal German, there is no difference; thus, you get away with a saying like this: "Man ist, was man isst" / "You are what you eat," which I find much more amusing in German.
In more dialectal/informal German, though, I'm reading that the "t" in "ist" can be dropped, while the "t" in "isst" won't be, so you'd be able to tell the difference in a conversation potentially. Elsewhere too, you might run into something like "isch" for "ist" and "issd" for "isst," which would also set it apart.
Otherwise, I'd say you would have to trust by context. "A woman is an egg" is essentially nonsense, while "A woman eats an egg" makes much more sense. Homophones exist in English too, and we don't struggle with them because of ingrained context. It doesn't help, perhaps, that Duolingo is somewhat famous for its nonsense sentences.
1509
No. It's just context. Maybe in really careful speech, the i in ist is slightly longer. But that would actually be an overcorrection.
1509
No. Eine is not an , it's the feminine form of ein. And ein can mean a, an or one, depending on context and English rules.
Isn't "the" the same as "one"?
It is not.
it said I was wrong and that the correct answer was "One woman is eating an egg"
That is not "the" correct answer, though it is "a" correct answer.
There are multiple correct answers, not just one.
You can also translate it as "A woman is eating an egg", for example.