"にわでとりがないています。"
Translation:Birds are singing in the yard.
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Niwa can be translated as garden. Without a kanji its hard to know which niwa you are talking about.
Like how san is both 3 and mister (but for 3 you would use kanji usualy)
It's not hard in this case. You don't have kanji when you speak either, you know.
But when you speak you usually have a lot more context (visual cues, previous statements, etc) whereas here it could be anything.
But you DO have context to make up for that. That is what compensates for itself.
Naiteimasu can be translated many ways here: crying, calling, chirping, tweeting. I recommend making this question one that you select words from a list
Chirping and tweeting can be quite the same thing if you sum it to a sound birds do, and if you sum crying as a sound an animal does, it sums up to one word and not entirely different words. I guess that's why in english pokemon games, you have pokemon "cries", maybe this is some sort of direct translation.
Plus, it might be a cultural difference, seeing animal noises as cries is not that wierd, once you detach the emotion.
Why isn't "THE bird" accepted here? Without further context, I think the が particle can go with either the definite or indefinite article in this case.
The difference between が and は is basically that the former INTRODUCES a topic, where the latter BRINGS IT BACK. If you think about it, "the" is usually used before a noun we're familiar with or that we know, whereas "a/an" is used to talk about things we don't know or are not familiar with. "A girl asked me out" / "THE girl asked me out". Hope that helps.
I realize and appreciate your general point, but still think が can go with "the" in some common instances. For example, by my lights, 女の子が私に尋ねた can be translated as "the GIRL [rather than the boy] asked me out."
Should I really have gotten this wrong because I said garden instead of yard???
They should accept "birds are chirping in the yard" because that's another meaning of naiteimasu
Why is "The bird is chirping in the yard" wrong? Can we really distinguish a vs the without more context?
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Note I am a native English (American) speaker who's studied Japanese for a couple of years, so I put this all forth tentatively, but with a bit of experience.
「にわでとりがないています」「庭で鳥が鳴いています」 I'd say the で makes it more like "Birds are singing in the yard".
「にわにとりがないています」「庭で鳥が鳴いています」 This is more like "Birds are singing into the yard" [like you sing into a microphone].
で emphasizes the activity being done, while に emphasizes the place (and often implies motion towards a location, though not always. 庭にいます for example, is using に for existence at a location). In this sentence I'd say that に is unlikely because we don't often sing/chirp into something.
There are examples where both に and で are possible, though.
For example
「東京にアパートを買いました。」I bought an apartment in Tokyo. [emphasizing that I am in Tokyo, buying an apartment which is in Tokyo]
「東京でアパートを買いました。」I bought an apartment in Tokyo. [Emphasizing buying an apartment rather than in Tokyo. I think this wouldn't even necessarily imply that the apartment is in Tokyo]
Yh, I'm still pretty confused as to why they used で instead of に.
鳴く is more appropriate for birds than 歌う. 鳴く is tweeting or chirping in this case.
We really need kanji for this sort of thing. The text to speech system makes it hard to hear the parts of speech.
i used "A" bird and i got marked wrong. how do I know if the article (or lack thereof) is meant to be perceived as definite or indefinite?
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I posted "The" bird instead of "A" and it was wrong, both should have been correct as there no particle to differential the start of the sentence.
It marked "Birds are singing in the garden" wrong, and suggested "Birds in the garden are singing" instead. (And right now, the translation given at the top of this page says "Birds are singing in the yard.")
My original translation seems fine; I've reported it (Jan. 10, 2018).
EDIT: "In the yard, birds are singing." was marked wrong as well; I've reported it too (1/14).
Can someone explain why this question refused to accept anything other than "A bird in the yard are chirping"? The grammar in that English is horrible. It rejected "A bird in the yard is chirping," and "The birds in the yard are chirping," which are the two things I tried prior. It insists that the singular bird "are" chirping. I reported the bad English and suggested my answers be accepted as of 1/12/2018
'The birds in the garden are singing' was marked wrong. The correct answer was apparently 'A bird in the yard are singing'
