"あのベッドはみじかいです。"

Translation: That bed is short.

[JohnPMChappell]

あのベッドは短いです。

[rslaton1]

I'm curious why bed is spelled here with a mix of hiragana and katakana. Can anyone tell me what's going on?

[AnaLydiate]

It's not a mixture. It's all katakana. へ (he) is the same in hiragana and katakana.

[CYDai]

Nope, they are not the same.ヘ and へ have different Unicode numbers

[CoolBeanColleen]

Still, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between them

[DanAtuch]

First one is pretty sharp, while second one is more rounded.

[DragonWithaFez]

Well yeah, but for most purposes you can write them the same way because any difference is so subtle, lol

[inudeska]

True, but if you ctrl+f for katakana ヘ on chrome it finds both the hiragana and katakana one even though they're "technically" different symbols. Weird

[TomPiddock]

No weirder than searching case insensitive when you think about it.

[FloofyBoofy]

Hiragana is for native Japanese words, Katakana is used for words borrowed from other languages.

[EvaBral]

why is "that bed is small" wrong?

[AnaLydiate]

Because mijikai means short not small - this sentence is referring to the length of the bed - not its size big or small.

[oveseer]

why is it あの and not その at the start?

[lupos7]

Because it's farther away probably. Without any other context to go off of it's pretty much "that bed over there" instead of "that bed right there next to us" I think.

[oveseer]

ah, ok. Thanks!

[lupos7]

sorry i forget that a lot of duolingo people are just starting out. To clarify there are a lot of k.s.a.d. words in japanese that follow this pattern
Koko = right here
Soko = ther
asoko = over there some where away from both the speaker and the listener
doko = where?

Kono = this (as in this is good)
Sono = that
Ano = that thing over there
dono = what?

kore = this ( as in this apple is good )
kochira = this way
konna = this sort / type / way of doing it

[AnaLydiate]

Just to clarify a bit more - kono, sono and ano must modify a noun - they cannot be used independently. So kono neko - this cat (close to the speaker), sono neko - that cat (close to the listener), ano neko that cat over there (far away from both the speaker and the listener). kore, sore and are on the other hand do not need to modify a noun - they can be used independently - kore - this thing. sore - that thing, are - that thing over there.

[oveseer]

this helps a lot, thanks again.

[ShineyMcshine79]

Lol. I'm using text to speech for the English answers, and it turned 'that bed is short' in to 'that booty short'. Tickled me funny bone.