"Băiatul mănâncă mult, însă este mic."

Translation: The boy eats a lot, but he is small.

[Mondori]

"though" or "although" should be accepted as well as "but."

[Joemaza]

Just a small note on synonyms in English: "a lot" is equivalent of "much", thus, "The boy eats much, but he is small."

[BenYoung84]

Yes but in contemporary English we don't use much by itself in affirmative statements, only in questions or negations. However, if it is qualified by an adverb (e.g. very) then it is okay in affirmative statements as well.

[HannuKoson]

We are learning Romanian, but often we dive in details in English that are ridiculous for the context. And what is worse, the comments or what is accepted seems to vary so much for both languages that it is impossible to know whether your solution is correct or not.

[WarsawWill]

EFL teacher and BrE speaker here. Yes we are learning Romanian, but
some Romanians are using this course to learn English, so I hardly consider discussing the difference between natural and unnatural English (something this course has rather a lot of) to be a ridculous detail. But then I'm just a language freak. It's all grist to my mill.

What's more, it was given as a possible answer here, so I think it's totally relevant to comment that it's not something a native speaker would normally say, and for this reason wouldn't in fact be accepted in an English test.

And I can confirm what BenYoung says.

1) The use of "much" and "many" in affirmative sentences is extremely formal

2) The adverb "much" is only used after certain verbs, to talk about degree, not quantity, and even then only with a second modifying adverb:
"She loves him very much"
"She loves him a lot"
But we don't say:
X "She loves him much"

The use of "much" here would sound plain weird.

[BenYoung84]

I'm sure that you were making a general statement and not calling my comment ridiculous!

There are a lot of different opinions on Duolingo, that can be confusing but the amount of time people are willing to volunteer to help others learn is also incredibly helpful.

[ericdsouza4]

This isn't natural English

[Wes708337]

I put "The boy eats a lot but he is still small." The seems to capture the meaning of the Romanian in a very natural English statement but it wasn't accepted. Is this an incorrect interpretation or is it a variant that Duo has missed?

[BenYoung84]

It's incorrect because you've added a word. însă can mean but or still in different situations but it can't mean the two words together.