"かのじょはおねえさんが四人います。"
Translation:She has four older sisters.
32 Comments
So, breaking it down:
かのじょ(she)は(topic marker)おねえさん(older sister)が(subject marker)四(4)人(person/people)います(have/has, polite form)
So we don't need to use の instead of は in this case because of います at the end?
I think 「彼女のお姉さんが四人います」would be understood, but would also clearly mark you as a non-native, similar to how we can tell someone isn't a native English speaker if they pronounce a word with all the wrong phonemes.
Replacing は with の seems like it'd make the sentence become redundant or grammatically nonsensical.
from the duo pronunciation, it's still unclear to me how 四 is pronounced here and how 人 is prounounced. I'm hearing "yoni ni" for both of them together. Can anyone clarify?
When using the counter 人 it is read as にん (except for one and two where 一人 is read as ひとり and 二人 is read as ふたり respectively).
四人 then would be read as よにん. Here 四 is read as よ instead of よん.
So, what you're actually hearing is "Yo nin" and the last "i" belongs to "imasu". :)
I am curious about the pronunciation of 人 here. With lower numbers e.g. 二人 it's spoken futari as a special number. When we talk about a person's nationality e.g. 日本人 it's pronounced jin. But in 四人 it is nin. How do I know when it is "jin" and when it is "nin"? Is "nin" only for counting? Are 一人 and 二人 the only special cases and all higher numbers of people use "nin"?
194
Welcome to the fabulous world of kanji readings. ;) Well, in this case (jin versus nin), my answer would be: you have to know! And as Stephanie290249 said, you are right about the first two numerals’ being irregular; you have a chart summing this up in unit Home, along with some other counters.
Me too! I’ve started taking screenshots, it’s incredibly frustrating. For me it’s only the listening ones, I’ve noticed with those they don’t like answers with kanji except for the numbers/counters. かれ／彼 and かのじょ/彼女 however are hit or miss so I can never guess which to use because sometimes they want the kana and sometimes the kanji
- 68
with the listen exercises, I noticed they usually accept the kanji that are shown in the lesson and lessons before the one you are, but most of the time it accepts pure kana. There are some exercises that force you to use some kanji, but they are very rare.
Because it is saying the she has older sisters, not that they are her sisters.
Why do the readings suck so badly? Duolingo really has to get their ❤❤❤❤ together with the kanji readings. the 人 kanji should be pronounced にん (nin), but when you click it, the じん (jin) reading is used. How can something like this make it through beta?
- 194
Apparently, according to some comments elsewhere, the problem lies in Duolingo’s interface: it was conceived for single speech units as readable individually, which is not the case in Japanese, since context matters to determine which is the correct way to pronounce a kanji.
Please be understanding, I am quite confident that the volunteers do their best to enhance users’ experiences with the software.
The sentence order and structure is so unlike what i'm used to with English
Is 彼女 really needed here? And is it actually used in everyday conversations? It just really confuses me and i would rather omit it
So my first reading here definitely came out with this girl's older sister being 4 people. This sentence feels awkward as hell.
