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- "My dog died last week."
"My dog died last week."
Translation:先週、私の犬が死にました。
43 Comments
先週、犬が亡くなりました was marked wrong. This is inconsistent in DL, because until now they accepted answers w/o the clear specification of the pronoun. Japanese rarely use pronouns and if you say 先週、犬が亡くなりました, it is implied that the dog was mine, if there is no context...
I agree, the pronoun isn't necessary. But I think using 亡くなる (nakunaru) is what is getting your answer marked incorrect. 1) It means "pass away" rather than "die", and 2) you wouldn't typically use it with an animal.
I see that the contributors are now accepting the two interchangeably. I would still caution users to remember that 死にます means "to die", while 亡くなります is a euphemism closer to "pass away". I would also caution users that they might unintentionally come off as strange to some native speakers when using 亡くなります to talk about pets.
This HiNative answer says:
Q. Is 亡くなる then reserved for humans only?
A: No. It depends. If the owner of the animal is someone you respect and admire, you could use 亡くなる
⭕️僕の犬が今日死んだ。
⭕️僕の犬が今日死んでしまった。
⭕️僕の犬が今日死んでしましました。
X 僕の犬が今日亡くなった。
△僕の犬が今日亡くなってしまった。if you want to show your respect to your dog, or you really treat him as your human family, you could use 亡くなってしまった
⭕️先生の大切なイヌが昨日亡くなってしまったそうだ。
⭕️先生の大切なイヌが昨日死んでしまったそうだ。
In general in Japan:
⭕️ = correct
△ = not perfect but okay
X = incorrect
The top translation I am seeing for this sentence is 先週、私の犬が死にました。 If you're asking why there is a に after 死, it's because the word "died" is 死にました (shinimashita).
507
先週は犬が死にました. What exactly is wrong here. I know I could (and probably should) have dropped the は. But isn't it optional?
- 407
I think because last week is not the topic of the sentence (simply a time phrase), it's not like the dog belong to last week
Both「犬は先週死にました」and 「私の犬は先週死にました」were marked wrong. I believe this should be correct? I reported it.
I can't understand it because in another lesson of the same section,「彼女は去年離婚しました」has a similar structure but is correct...
Or is it incorrect to use は as a topic marker when talking about someone passing away?..
は sounds a bit strange to me, but I'm not a native speaker so I'm always hesitant to comment on particles.
犬が死にました。
My dog died. (が shows us the subject)
犬は死にました。
Speaking of my dog, it died. (は shows us the topic)
My dog is the one that died. (は can also show a contrast)
- 829
otherwise there is no indication that it is your dog, it would simply read as "a dog died last week"
In the same way that you drop subject pronouns, you can drop possessive pronouns in Japanese. If I say 手が痛いです (te ga itai desu), I usually mean that "my hand hurts", not just any hand. The same with 犬が死にました (inu ga shinimashita), it can mean "a dog died", but it's also perfectly reasonable and correct to interpret it as "my dog died".
Maybe the assumption that the speaker is involved only works with relationships like 母は〜, because it has to be someone's mom.
I get what you're saying, but on the Anki deck I'm using I have the sentence "犬が病気で死にました" and there it's translated as "Our dog got sick and died" instead of "The dog died of sickness". So I guess "my/our dog" can also be implied in this case?
Yes, “our/my” is the default but IMO it's more from common sense and convenience than a feature of the language, just as in English (“I'm taking the dog to the vet”).
What is grammatically different is the subject and even copulas being optional.
come on duolingo, idk if the system doesnt accept answers in hiragana or what. this was my answer and it was incorrect 'せんしゅぼくのいぬがしにました'
It's not "proper" Japanese. It's possible most people would understand you, but it's like if I say in English "my inu died last week".
