"How is your mother?"
Translation:お母さんはお元気ですか？
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i report everything with no audio, the more you do it, the higher the chance it gets seen and implemented
おげんき is more polite and thus more often used when speaking to/of other people. With friends (or when referring to yourself) げんき is fine.
When writing properly, I should be always using the kanji form, right? Does duo only teach us this so we can read it? Shouldn't we be at least shown the kanji for genki in this case? Or it's correct to use kana too?
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DL is introducing the kanji slowly over time, which I think is a better way to learn them.
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Actually, it seems to be inconsistent. 2 lessons ago, they gave the kanji for genki. Now, it is back to the hiragana again.
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I recently discovered that if you log into duo from desktop browser, you can utilize a dictionary and list of all the words you've learned. It's quite useful, actually.
In this sentence can you add the honorific to げんき? お母さんはおげんきですか ? Or is it wrong ?
Then what is the different if we use okasan wa genki vs okasan wa genki desu ka ?
Without the "か" youre saying "mother is OK", as opposed to asking how your mother is
The first one is missing "desu", meaning it's informal. It's also missing "ka", so it's not a question, it just means "Your mother is okay". The second one is polite, and because it has "ka", it's "Is your mother okay?"
The latter is a bit more polite. Comparable to "how's your mom?" vs "how is your mother doing?"
This whole section has been disproportionately difficult. It introduces too many new variables, all thrown together. It's going against the Duolingo principles, which is to learn new things by seeing them one at a time. Frankly, I'm getting close to quitting. Perhaps not being interested enough in learning different hues of all the relatives is my fault, but lesson administrators could perhaps consider introducing these elements at a slower pace. Just my 2c
I felt the same, that the pace exploded. I was discouraged but started reviewing previous lessons and chipped away at the Family group of lessons. Just doing some every day helps.
I honestly felt the same way, but managed to make myself push through. It was a pain, yeah, but it's cool getting to review these lessons and see how far I've come in Japanese.
(DavidErick14, I did the same as you, where I did these lessons first and then the review stuff I was good at.)
what (and why) is the difference between お母さんはお元気ですか？ and お母さんは元気ですか？ I gather they are both correct.
both are correct, but it sounds more natural for a native to use the honorific prefix when addressing someone else to ask for their or the well-being of someone close to them.
お元気ですか？ "are you well?".
元気です。 "I'm well".
When do i want to use お instead of を before certain verbs? Like お元気 in this example vs. を食べます in previous lessons.
Neither of them comes before certain verbs.
を is the direct object particle and comes after the direct object of the sentence. You often find it directly before the verb because it's common practice to mention the verb and object close together because they are closely related. There is however no rule that it has to come before the verb.
を is always the direct object particle. You won't find it as a character in regular words and お is never used as the particle.
There are however cases where the direct object is treated as the topic of the sentence and uses は instead, this is particularly common for negative sentences. は and を cannot be used together after the same word, so the を is omitted for those sentences.
お as in お元気 is a honorific prefix along with ご, they come before some nouns to be more polite. To my knowledge, the honorific prefix is not used with verbs, however you may also encounter the letter お as a normal part of words.
When exactly to use the honorific prefix and when not to use it is a bit more complicated as there are many exceptions to it's usage. For example there is words where it has essentially become part of the word and is almost always used like お茶, or even words where the word with it took on a new meaning, for example お水 specifically refers to bottled water for drinking as opposed to water in general like 水 does. As a beginner it's probably better just to memorize the words to use it with.
when they out down two options do they want you to choose the first one or the second one? is this a trick question? I put the first and it said it was wrong, it was actually supposed to be the second.
Could you please specify the mentioned options? I would like to help but it's been quite some time since I did this excercise.
well it showed two options of how to write "How is your mother?" so the next question was the same one so I chose to answer it with the first option and it said it was wrong when it clearly showed that answer for what you could write down
Options: like there are two kinds of ways of the sentence you could put down to answer the question.
Because of the honorifics it's obvious that you're not talking about your own mother. Therefor the person you're talking to will assume you're talking about their mother, and leaving out "anata no" will not cause any confusion. Since it doesn't cause confusion, it can be safely left out.
