"えんぴつとペンをかいました。"
Translation:I bought pencils and pens.
17 Comments
How am I supposed to know it was only one pen without ippon attached? If it automatically implies only one without a counter attached, why isn't it a pen and a pencil?
Yeah, I got it wrong with "I bought a pencil and pen." How am I supposed to know if it's plural or not without context or a counter. I think if you were to actually say this without context it could be taken either way. Somewhat like if you were to say "I bought food" in English. You didn't specify if you bought one thing or several things.
Yes. But Duolingo is testing you if you know what えんぴつ and ペン are. So order in the answer is important.
It's not about the order, they used "a pen". I got it right with "I bought pens and pencils."
In fact, you should swap them in a translation, because pencils and pens is wrong in English
285
Oh, so this would be an instance of Siamese twins, as I have discovered (in a comment by vytah) in another thread! Thank you for pointing it out, as it is indeed listed there, amongst others under “With alliteration”.
pen and pencil
Thanks teejay makes sense, i was about to rage but your logic calmed me :)
What u write us saying the same thing. It doesn't matter which order the word pen or pencils is in in real life. The meaning is the same.
- 285
Well, as I have mentioned in another comment here thanks to AdamScott794079, it appears that technically, in English, pen and pencil is a pair of Siamese twins, which means that this phrase is idiomatically fixed in this specific order. Thus, it does actually matter somewhat “in real life”: reversing words might sound weird to some and to some extent.
I would agree that the order is unimportant if the goal is only to prove one’s mastery of the meaning of the Japanese sentence, though.
