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- "今年はよくラーメンを食べました。"
"今年はよくラーメンを食べました。"
Translation:I often ate ramen this year.
68 Comments
you could try some kanji learning websites, i use wanikani! its the best.
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When the suggested translation is rejected, it's a technical glitch, as opposed to a missing translation.
Apparently what one can do is submit a bug report so Duolingo's technical staff can deal with it: . It's best to include a screenshot.
'Often' should be accepted for よく . If you wanted the answer ' a lot' why not use たくさん ?
It clearly means "This year, I ate ramen often." You didn't use たくさん here, if we're going to be literal. Sometimes I question why I keep going in this course when I'm correcting the questions more than they're teaching me.
The course in beta, so yes, that's exactly what you're doing, you're improving the course for when it is completed.
Yeah I had the same answer and DL said "Nope, correct answer is 'He ate a lot of ramen this year'" which makes no sense since there is no "he" implied and thus "I" should be implied or at the very least not rejected.
Only explanation is that the translation database has more holes than Swiss cheese. Literally speaking I suppose ました should translate to "I ate" rather than "I have eaten", but since we are talking about the current year, which by definition isn't over yet, "I have eaten..." seems the most logical English translation with an implied "...thus far." omitted at the end.
But, shouldn't we use the present perfect, since the action happens "this year"?
I understand that... But English and Japanese are two different languages that don't work the same way. My question was about English ;)
When you look back on a year, you usually use past tense, right? You don't say, "I have a lot of great trips" on New Year's Day. You say "I had a lot of great trips" to reminisce on that specific year. If you use present perfect, this is the new sentence: 今年はよくラーメンを食べます、which doesn't have a very smooth English translation: this year, I often eat ramen. Even when we interpret it, it has an entirely different meaning (the correct one remarking on the whole of the year, the new one remarking on your current progress).
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Ice-Kagen was suggesting using the present perfect, not the present. It is a form of past tense in English. So in your example it would instead be "I have had a lot of great trips". This feels like a much more natural way in English to talk about about a recent period that you are refering to with "this" and qualifying with "often". So for the above sentence, a more natural English translation would be "This year, I have often eaten a lot of ramen."
You are by all means correct, grammatically. Unfortunately, when reminiscing, people tend to use "this" (year, month, week, day [today]) as a closed period in the past.
Not necessarily. You could use either the simple past or the present perfect, depending on the context/intended meaning.
I'd like to know this as well. I entered the latter and it was considered wrong
Yes, I'd like to know as well. Could it be because を should be followed directly by the verb?
Japanese adverbs are pretty free, so both of those answers should be correct, as long as 今年は was included at the beginning.
I see I have to study English verbs too.
To me, 'ate' is for a finished period in the past. This year is not a finished period, so I would use 'am eating' or 'have been eating' instead
Unfortunately, studying English verbs won't help you here, because in English (at least in British English) we would say, "I have eaten", because as you rightly point out, the year hasn't finished. We have to remember that the authors of this course are not native English speakers, so sometimes the English is not quite natural.
I wrote "This year I ate lots of ramen". Is there a reason why that is wrong?
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Why is it wrong to say: "This year I ate good ramen"? As I understand, よく can mean both "often" and "good".
いいラーメン (ii ramen) would mean "good ramen". An adjective right before the noun it is describing should be in its plain form. よく (yoku) would only be an adjective if it was combined with ない to mean "not good".
Why not "we" in place of "I"? It simply occurred to me first personally, and I do not see why it should not.
The present perfaect tense shoukd be used in English for an incomplete period of time. I have often eaten ramen this year.
If using US English, the grammar is fine. In Br English, the sentence would be correct if you've finished with ramen for the year, otherwise, present perfect is required.
"I have eaten a lot of ramen this year" not accepted for... arbitrary reasons?
in English, a frequency adverb like "often" can't go in between the verb (ate) and the direct object (ramen). Instead, it should go before the verb or after the direct object. So you could say "I often ate ramen," or "I ate ramen often," but you wouldn't say "I ate often ramen."
Ramen is a specific kind of noodles, so it's correct to call ramen "noodles" in the same way that it's correct to call chicken "meat", but it's not the most precise translation.
