37 Comments
This mistake is getting annoying. I've flagged it so many times and they still haven't fixed it. It's very egregious, and I feel sorry for people who are beginners in French to have to hear this over and over again. They are learning the wrong thing! It's cringe-worthy and makes me worry about what I am learning with Spanish, which I AM a beginner in.
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2017-09-01: 4 years later, this annoying pronunciation is still there <sub>~</sub>~~
I don't think it is a mistake. isn't the last consonant pronounced if the next word begins with a vowel?
you are right, the last one is. In this sentence however the voice is pronouncing the 's' as well, which is not the last consonant. This is incorrect when 'est' means 'is'. Seems duolingo attached the wrong pronunciation rule or something.
5 years now and they still haven't fixed it. instead of doing silly things like valerian they could've fixed many of these mistakes.
Is "japonaise" intentionally not capitalized? Is this something common in French?
Yes, but you need to put it in a form that DL can recognize as a question. It doesn't parse punctuation so, it can't be sure you understand that if you write it that way.
Est-ce qu'elle est japonaise ? The est in est-ce que does serve as your verb; you still need a verb.
- 1753
In spoken French, you may do that with a voice inflection at the end. In writing, it's better to use a different structure.
That would be C'est japonais ?, Est-ce que c'est japonais ?, or Est-ce japonais ? (in order of increasing formality).
It is. That's literally what it says at the top of the screen in my case. I'm not sure if Duolingo does this, but maybe you were dinged for capitalization.
Funny, I was given a wrong answer for stating "She is Japanese?", which seems very unfair, considering we're not going for literal translations.
They're really testing your knowledge that inversion implies a question. While you knew that, and thus put a "?", the system doesn't detect punctuation, so as far as it's concerned, you wrote a statement and indicated you might not know it's a question form.
In this case, the literal translation is also the most straightforward. I suppose DL should also allow an inversion such as you propose, but I don't really see the point.
Could the question be phrased, "Est-ce qui elle est japonaise?" I'm just trying to understand the use of "Est-ce que/qui" as an alternative to the inversion type interrogative construction.
You could say "Est-ce qu'elle est japonaise?" You can always form a question by adding "Est-ce que" to the beginning of a statement. But not "Est-ce qui" as far as I'm aware. I have never heard of that, except as part of the construction "Qui est-ce qui" (ie "Qui est-ce qui parle japonais? Who is speaking Japanese?")
Last week I was penalized for translating "C'est un Allemand" as "He is a German". Duolingo insisted that correct translation was "He is a German man" Now, I am penalized for translating "Is she Japanese woman?". Duolingo wants it " Is she Japanese" I am completely lost. Thank you
Allemand (capital A) is a noun (hence the article); japonaise (small j) is an adjective.
In English, we only have separate noun versions of a few nationalities: Englishman, Frenchman, Pole. As to whether "a German" should be accepted as a noun form, I can't say. We wouldn't say "He is a French." I would prefer "a German man" because it acknowledges that Allemand is the masculine form, whereas "a German" could be either masculine or feminine.
the man voice above pronounces correctly.
the problem is with the other record.
The woman says «Est-ce qu'elle japanese?»
Which seems to be a wrong way of saying «Est-ce qu'elle est japanese?»
- 1753
They say it's a sign that we're making progress when we type words from one language while thinking about the other. EN "Japanese" = FR "japonais/japonaise". But I think you know that already.
is this structure only for a question? If I was just stating, "She is japonese." It would be "Elle est japonaise." Correct?
Oui. This is inversion, used primarily for questions - although you will also encounter it in literature when reporting speech. Eg. "dit-elle/dit-il." It comes after the speech reported. Equivalent to the English "said she/said he" (rather archaic in English).
