"I buy flowers."

Translation: お花をかいます。

[jnantes]

hana by itself shouldn't be wrong, right?

[MiraJ.]

I put just hana and it worked. But still asking here how to tell when to use ohana vs hana?

[mzerrath]

My sensei used to say that the o- prefix is there to make the word sound elegant; it doesn't mean anything, but it makes you sound educated or respectable, particularly with oeople you don't kniw well. I would use the o- prefix all the time just to be safe, though you might drop it if you're among close friends (though I don't know if this theory is correct).

[dandelionmagic]

i heard it basically means "honorable" and that's why it's fancy and why all the "honorable" jokes and references exist. it's respectful not just as being polite but as showing respect with whatever it's attached to as well. for example when you talk to others about their mom you say okaasan so "your honorable mother".

[Paralars1]

right

[V2Blast]

It was accepted for me.

[Ichiban123]

Kanji isn't accepted? i typed お花を買いますand got it wrong.

[deactivated user]

Same here. Some other sentences do understand 買います but not this one.

[Phonon_Lattice]

I am used to type all in kanji and one does not know when will be accepted or not. This is truly a headache.

[RobertEddy]

This business of learning new words by guessing and then getting them wrong is not productive and should be changed.

[RyanMcAlpi]

Ohana means family
(But not im japanese)

[Ever2662]

Doesn't accept 花を買います. Reported.

[kokaku]

there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which words are introduced with kanji - we're being drilled on 'to buy' - why not use the kanji?

this is probably the most frustrating part of the Japanese course - does anyone know if the beta is going to shift to more kanji?

[EmmaGerritse]

Testing the web interface, it counted my answer as wrong because I didn't include the 。