"いえのちかくにゆうびんきょくがあります。"

Translation: There is a post office near my house.

[darthoctopus]

家の近くに郵便局があります

[kbreddit]

郵便局 (yuu-bin-kyoku) - post office

[Kyle378629]

Does it make sense to assume they are talking about "my house"? You could argue the context lends itself better to "my", but "the house" seems perfectly valid.

[ChrissyDude]

'The house' should have been accepted, have flagged.

[Pamela973130]

I agree!

[beatcreep]

Put in "close to my house" instead of "close by my house". Is there a difference?

[Erin297090]

I am from the US and "close by" is an awkward phrase I never hear. I guess it's technically correct, but nobody says it. It's always "close to" in this case. The two phrases mean the exact same thing, in my experience, so I have no clue why your answer was rejected.

[saliast]

Close to.. Close by.. Near to.. Nearby.. All are correct.. Just duo doesnt seem aware of this?

[KyrokiKaze]

Its fairly common in southern dialect

[Shinobusagi]

I think that should have been correct.

[Emer_Learns]

I would usually use "close by" by itself ("it's close by") to mean "in the neighborhood" or "within a short walk", but I don't think it's incorrect to say "close by [a place]". I'm from Ireland, native English speaker.

[dumark53]

Why is it "my" house--couldn't it be someone else's house?

[katharinalouise]

I put also close to my home is a post office. They didn't accept

[Orion-the-Red]

because post office is the subject of arimasu, therefore post office is the subject of "there is a..."

[regularfanb0y]

I understood now that いえのちかくに means "House's nearby" and chikai turned into chikaku because chikai is used to describe the existence of something? (Like suyoku fukimasu "blows strongly").

[WunderDrew]

I put my house is close to the post office, and it counted my answer as wrong.

[WunderDrew]

I guess my question is since they are close together does it really matter which one i say is near the other?

[Shinobusagi]

Yes, it matters, because "There is a post office near my house" and "My house is close to the post office" are different grammatical constructions.

Note that it doesn't say "The post office is close to my house", which would indeed be more or less interchangeable with your version, but uses "There is (...)" instead. The Japanese sentence literally translates to "In the vicinity of my house, there is a post office", which is different from "My house is (...)", regardless of whether you switch 'house' and 'post office'.

[Grame69]

The structure of this sentence is mind numbing. How long does it take until you get used to this type of stuff?

[Medusa747]

I think this sentence came up in a mock N5 test.

[cinna708080]

Please, at least include the kanji 家. Its so basic.

[Steven986698]

If I say 'There is a post office near home.', surely it's implied that it's 'my home'.

[Dylan_Nicholson]

"Near my house is a post office" not accepted - apparently the word "there" before "is" is somehow critical to the meaning of the sentence in a way that eludes me...

[regularfanb0y]

Can someone break down the first part? "Ie no chikaku ni".

[RuideSousa2]

Why not: There is a post office next to my house?

[Garyan4]

Why we can't use Kanji in these sentences???

[PurpleSofa]

Wrote 家の近くに郵便局があります。 and it counted me wrong.
Good job, Duolingo, good job. /s

[Sihaz]

There is a post office near to the house. marked wrong - there is no implied possessive in the japanese...

[Jason898658]

I wrote, "Close to the house, there is a post office." and was rejected.