Since 子ども is followed by が, we can assume it is the subtheme of the omitted theme which is usually the speaker (わたしは). "Concerning me, concerning children, there are six"

Japanese is very context specific so often the subject(IE: Watashi , Anata, Haha ,Neko) is left out as in conversation it tends to be apparent.

That is also accepted.

I put "there are 6 children" and it was correct. If you add in extra stuff it marks it as correct since it could be via context

It's easy to infer

います means "have"

子ども refers to any general child

That’s because whenever you give a number people/things, you have to add a classifier (also called counter word) together with the number. You can think of the classifier as telling you the unit which you are counting, like in English you cannot say “one milk”, you have to specify the unit: Are you talking about a cup of milk, a jug, a bottle…? But while in English you are only sometimes forced to do so, in Japanese you always are.

The classifier depends on the noun. For example flat things are counted in 枚(まい), long, (roughly) cylindrical objects in 本(ほん), books in 冊(さつ) etc. You have to use the correct classifier for the thing you are counting, so for example it would be wrong to say ペン一枚 for “one pen”; you have to say 一本 because pens are long and cylindrical rather than flat surfaces. This is similar to how you can’t say “one piece of milk” or “one slice of peas” in English because those units don’t fit the word you’re counting.

The “unit” for people is 人 which is in this function usually read にん. Unfortunally, “one person” and ”two persons” are exceptions which have to be learnt by heart:

• 一人(ひとり)
• 二人(ふたり)
• 三人(さんにん)
• 四人(よんにん)
• 五人(ごにん)

and so on.

Does that answer your question?

It's the counter for "people", like how "tsu" was used for "things". As for the children, there are six people.

I was thinking what a crazy number that is for Japan

I have done it for you!

When used as the for people, the kanji 人 is read as にん, not じん. There are exceptions (most importantly 一人(ひとり) and 二人(ふたり)), compare the wikipedia article on Japanese counters for a more detailed account.

It's rokunin. When it's used as a counter, it's pronounced "nin" instead. Also, 1 and 2 people are irregular and they're "hitori" and "futari", so you have to remember that ;w; once i made the stupid mistake of saying "ichinin" haha

"G"s in Japanese are often pronounced very nasally (is that a word? Nasally, nasal-y?) so it sounds like "ng" as in "running".

I'm not sure how scientifically accurate this is, but I believe the reason for this comes down to Japanese speakers using their tongues much less than English speakers when producing consonant sounds.

I mean, if you consider the shape of your mouth as you pronounce the "o" at the end of kodomo, it's very hollow with the body of your tongue pressed down to create space between it and the roof of your mouth. Now try to say ga moving your tongue as little as possible. If I'm right, hopefully you'll end up sounding more similar to the recording.

No, 子供 (こども) can be used to refer to your own child/children, and it can be singular or plural.

子供たち could also be used here, but just 子供 is still perfectly acceptable. Have a read of one of my earlier comments about how -たち is used to mark definite plurals.

Nouns in Japanese, like 子供, can be singular or indefinite plurals, so 子供 means "a child" or "children". But 子供たち makes it a definite plural, meaning "the children".

In most cases, Japanese people don’t overtly mark plural and let it be understood from context (or just leave it open altogether if it’s not important for the conversation). In this case for example, the number makes it absolutely unambiguous that we’re talking about multiple children. But even if it wasn’t there, the speaker would probably just say 子どもがいます “I have [one or multiple] children” – basically just saying they are a parent without specifying the number of children.

The only exceptions I can think of, where the plural suffix -たち is pretty much obligatory, is if it’s a definite plural (in other words, if it were “the children” rather than just “children”) or when addressing a group: “Children, [you mustn’t do that]”.

No, the correct solution is the translation of 子どもが六人います; namely, "There are six children" or "I have six children".

The output I hear seems very reasonable. If anything, there seems to be a slight stutter between 六人 and います.

Of course it could be that what we hear is different. Some courses at least switch at random between multiple text-to-speech engines. I don’t know if this is true for the Japanese course as well – at least I don’t recall ever hearing another voice than the female one I get at the moment.

It means “there is/are” (of animate things). So this sentence could also be understood to mean “there are six children”. But Japanese also uses the “there is” pattern to express possession. For example わたしは子どもがいます literally means “as for me, there is a child” – which is understood as ”I have a child”. The problem is that the topic (usually marked with -は) can often be omitted. So if context makes clear that we’re talking about me, I can say 子どもがいます literally “there is a child” and leave the “as for me” implied. Unfortunately this dependency on context makes Japanese somewhat difficult to learn on Duolingo because there you don’t have any context…