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- "ほかの学生のテストを見てはいけません。"
"ほかの学生のテストを見てはいけません。"
Translation:You may not look at another student's test.
101 Comments
1186
I agree that those are also perfectly fine translations to deny someone permission to do something, but why would I try something different if my answer was accepted?
don't worry, I saw that your level in Japanese is already 25 so I was just curious about it
- 1186
Yes, but to be clear I don't mean that I speak Japanese perfectly, just that I live my daily life communicating only in Japanese.
This. You can't say "You can not see" in this context. Notably you also can't say "You can not look" UNLESS you have "at."
- 235
I think you didn't quite get the gist of this sentence. Here, 'cannot' means 'must not', not 'unable to'. It's irrelevant whether the tests are invisible or not.
- 1186
学生（がくせい） refers to university students, and 生徒（せいと）refers to students in compulsory education. This is something that used to confuse me because I learned that gakusei = student, and I would incorrectly call junior high school students "gakusei".
So 学生 is student and 生徒 is pupil? That makes a lot of sense. Does that then mean that all those sentences about being an elementary school student (which I always found odd) are incorrect?
- 1186
I'm not sure what sentences you're referring to, but you usually call an elementary school student 児童 (jidou) or 小学生 (shougakusei) (生徒 seito seems to only be used in specific circumstances). 学生 (gakusei) by itself in general shouldn't be used for someone who isn't in university.
- 553
That wasn't the case when I lived in Japan as an English teacher at a high school (JET Programme). It was ~25 years ago, but we definitely referred to the students as 学生たち.
- 1186
Are you sure you didn't say 小学生たち or 中学生たち? I was corrected for calling junior high school students 学生 (~2011). As a classification (for example on a form where you have to list your job), any student can be classified as 学生, but to do so in a specific school setting is unusual. See: https://chigai-allguide.com/%E5%85%90%E7%AB%A5%E3%81%A8%E7%94%9F%E5%BE%92%E3%81%A8%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F/
- 553
Considering I was teaching in a high school, I can be certain that we never used 小 or 中. I should note that I meant that this was while in conversation with the other staff members, and not speaking of the students in any other setting.
- 1186
Interesting. Maybe because high school is not compulsory education, some people call high school students 学生 instead of 生徒 even though it's not the correct word.
- 700
The required answer 'you can not look...' is incorrect English. Of course you CAN look (which means able to look). What they mean is you must not look, which was not accepted. Reported.
In the context here, the implication of not being allowed to do it is still present when using cannot. Being a curmudgeon about language doesn't change the fact that it's still said this way
- 700
Curmudgeon or not, my point was that "must not look" (or "may not look"), which is actually more correct than "cannot look", was not accepted and should have been
- 700
Absolutely. Unfortunately, many native English speakers don't even differentiate between "can" and "may" nowadays.
Which is why it's pointless to cling to outdated 'rules'. Can is widely used to talk about permission and dictionaries list that usage, there's nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
English students read these comments too, so this kind of thing is confusing at best and actively misleading at worst! Please don't
The rules are not outdated. Failing to teach English speakers to correctly distinguish between "can" and "may" is not only lazy, but it makes distinguishing nuance of meaning more difficult. Your attitude is entirely too descriptivist.
- 553
Per Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use-can-and-may the use of "can" to mean "to have permission" is dated to at least the year 1500. It wasn't until the late 19th century that grammarians arbitrarily imposed a prescriptivist rule about only using "may" for permission.
It was not the year 1500. It was "by the end of the 1800s" according to the article you shared. 1500 is the year the article says they shared the senses of "ability" and "possibility," not permission.
We can debate about the level of arbitrariness with which it was originally imposed, but it is certainly not arbitrarily imposed today. My ears chafe every time I hear "can" used in the sense of permission.
- 152
English should read "students' tests" because it is posessive. The translation I saw was missing the apostrophe and said I had a typo for putting it in. There are multiple tests of multiple students at which you must not look, so proper grammar requires the s' ending.
- 1186
I think this is a problem with the duolingo programming, I've encountered an apostrophe at the end of a word being marked as a spelling mistake in other courses as well.
[Edit: 7/25/18 it seems the problem has been fixed.]
Can anyone explain how the は particule works in this sentence? It's not part of the verb, is it?
- 263
は is working like it usually does: as a topic marker. ほかの学生のテストを見を見て is a phrase describing an action (to look at another student's test), and that action is the topic of the sentence.
To add to this, this sentence can be read as: "As for looking at other students' tests, you cannot do it." where everything before the comma is the topic.
Even simpler with a gerund: Looking at other students' replies is a no-no. Too colloquial, I know.
This was a very educational sentence. I wish Duolingo had the feature to hide those answer words, because that would have made it more difficult. Now I could pretty much guess from the words what the answer was supposed to be.
you can change the settings so that you have to type the answer instead of selecting the words. i believe by clicking the keyboard icon
- 142
According to the hints, いけません can be translated as any of "may not", "must not" or "should not". Of course, in English, these three phrases have slight differences. Which is closest to the actual meaning of いけません? Examples: May not - I am denying your request Must not - You are forbidden to do something and/or doing so would have negative consequences Should not - It is advisable not to do something
it's sort of all of the above, depending on context. usually, it means "must not" and/or "may not" as you define it, but i've heard it used in all three ways.
if you want to be clear that your intent is "should not," you can say something like "しないほうがいい" literally meaning "it's better if you don't do [that]"
- 263
What's wrong with "looking at another student's test is not allowed"? Aside from it being very literal, and Duolingo rejecting it, I mean.
- 1186
It more or less means the same thing, though you'd want " students' ". I think your translation sounds a little less formal than the Japanese as it is not a command.
Only the "tests" is wrong.
I assume that everyone has the same test. Randomizing the question order only means more work for the teacher. (sarcasm)
This time I wrote: "You cannot look at another student's exam" and it was still wrong... Reported. Unless there is a rule when you can interchange "exam" and "test" and when you cannot?
- 1186
I think you were right to report. Some might say that テスト is test and 試験 (shiken) is exam, but "test" and "exam" are often used as interchangeable synonyms in English.
Finesse the issue with "work." That's the word I heard growing up—albeit in a former century and across the river.
- 285
I'm just happy to see a school question from the teacher's perspective instead of the students'. I haven't been in fourth grade for 36 years.
- 624
Heh. Yeah, thinking about it, a lot of these seem to be from the teacher's perspective. Gives some good representation. :)
- 239
Is "You are not allowed look at another's test” wrongly translated? I thought "はいけません" might mean that as well, but maybe it's something a bit different?
- 239
Thanks for the reply. Yeah you might be right maybe I was missing the word "student" on that attempt and that's why it was wrong. But then, does "はいけません" also means "You are not allowed"?
- 624
As was explained in the Tips section, when a verb (for example, "suru"/"shi masu" which means "do") is written in this way (for example, "shite wa ike masen") it means "you must not." It's a prohibition.
- 553
That should be OK. I don't know if it's in the list of acceptable answers for this exercise, though.
1st, ja nai is used for な adjectives, not ii. I am guessing the correct form you are trying to construct is ~みてもよくない です. However, the sentence you are referring to just plainly describing "it is not good to see", while the original sentence means "strictly not allowed to see"
Is there anything wrong with using "You must not look at the other students' tests" here? Not accepted by Duo.
- 1027
The corrected version it gives has the ' in the wrong spot. It is after the s not before.
- 235
It depends on the sentence - what was the complete answer? Apostrophe after 's' implies plural possessive - was that the case?
Why is "You cannot look at other student's tests." incorrect? How would you best say this in Japanese? Thanks.
- 1186
I think it might be the English grammar that's getting it marked wrong. If it's more than one student's test, it should be "other students' tests".
- 1186
Periods and commas are ignored, but I have had answers marked incorrect for incorrect apostrophe use.
"not allowed" as translation for "ikemasen" is used by Duolingo in other examples but not in this specific one. Why???????? Duo please explain.
- 1186
Be careful of the apostrophe. There's more than one student, so it has to be students'.
I though "Testo" meant something else. In the context of young teens at school it kind of made sense.
"You must not look at other students' tests!" ACCEPTED.
Too bad about the "test(s)" part, but it's lunch time.
buddy you keep commenting about the word tests as if it's wrong, but the japanese says "テスト" which means test. nowhere does it say anything about answers, work, or any of the other bizarre alternatives you've dreamed up. quit it
