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- "Wie viel Wein trinken sie?"
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@BenjaminFLevi thanks for the additional information!
(Sorry to reply here - your comment was nested too far in for me to reply.)
I think I see the exercise you mean, with the three options "Wie viel - Wie viele - Wie vielen", but "on the inside" it looks like "[Wie viel] Wein trinken sie?" (with the [Wie viel] bit being a drop-down list).
The "word" that that exercise is connected to is "wie viel" -- perhaps the system got a hiccup because it's actually multiple words.
Unfortunately, one sentence discussion can be attached to multiple kinds of exercises -- the system takes the sentences and, for the most part, decides itself what kinds of exercise mix to present to users (translations, multiple-choice with distractor sentences it picks itself, tapping, typing, etc.).
This drop-down list version is something that course contributors can create. But I would have expected it to display to learners the way it looks "in the back". Unfortunately, from there, we can't see the exercise that the student sees, so we often have to guess what they might have seen if there's not enough information in their comments.
Especially with multiple-choice questions that the system creates on its own -- there the choice of sentences is random and might be different each time, and there's absolutely no way to know what the learner saw, in what order, or how many correct solutions were mixed in between the incorrect ones. And not picking all the correct solutions in such a case seems to be fairly common so it's one of the first guesses if there isn't enough information.
As for the screenshot -- you can't upload them directly to a comment thread, so you'd have to put it on a website somewhere (a free image-sharing website would probably do), then the easiest thing is to post the URL of the image here.
(And I got to this thread by looking at a page that shows the most recent comments attached to any sentence discussion.)
I've filed a bug report based on your information.
Great, thanks! I've added that link to the bug report.
Interesting to see how it looks on the Android app; I've never used it and that exercise looks a bit different from how it would on the website.
And sorry that I don't think I can do anything directly about it.
I just got feedback that this issue should be fixed now but to let them know if it should pop up again.
Thanks for helping me report it!
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Is "wie viel" basically saying how much (wine)? Or is it saying how many (serves of wine)?
I would use wie vielen only in the dative plural -- wie vielen Menschen hast du geholfen? "How many people did you help?"
But: wie viel Wein hast du getrunfen? with no ending on viel in the masculine accusative singular.
If you rearrange this sentence as a statement rather than a question, it would be "Sie trinken ____ Wein." The words following "trinken" are accusative case, and "Wein" is masculine, and the adjective "viel" would be strong inflection; therefore, wouldn't the sentence be "Sie trinken vielen Wein" (if "Wein" is considered singular) or "...viele..." (if "Wein" is considered plural)? So, shouldn't the question use either "vielen" or "viele" rather than "viel"?
viel is a bit exceptional in this regard -- it's often used without an ending before a singular noun, so they might drink viele Getränke (many drinks) but viel Wein, viel Brause, viel Bier (masc, fem, neut).
The question is wrong. It already has "viel" in it, so the right answer ("Wie viel") yields "Wie viel viel Wein trinken sie?".
Not only is the question wrong, Duolingo forces you to return to the questions you answered "wrong", and since there is no correct answer, you can't complete the practice without it. Also, since Duolingo's algorithm seems to register the questions you missed as skills you need to strengthen, you're stuck with that question. You can't use the "Strengthen Skills" feature because you'll just get it again.
Please remove the question and add a "No correct answer" option when reporting a problem.
What kind of exercise did you see?
Was this a "Type what you hear" exercise? "Select all matching answers" (multiple choice)? "Choose the right option from the drop-down list"? "Translate German to English"? "Translate English to German"? "Match word pairs"?
If translation - did it involve typing, or tapping existing tiles? If tapping, what were the tiles you were given?
Which platform was this? Android app, iOS app, Website, something else?
Can you provide a screenshot, please?
What is the entire text on the screen? Including the prompt and any error messages you might see.
Perhaps I can submit a bug report, but just "the question is wrong" is not enough to go by.
It's a multiple choice question to complete a sentence:
_ viel Wein trinken sie?
The options provided are Wie viel / Wie viele / Wie Vielen. None of the options are accepted as correct answers by Duolingo.
I got it using the website platform.
Would '... do you drink?' also be a correct translation, depending on the context? I thought 'they' could also be used in the sense of addrrssing some individual in a formal/polite way. Duo doesn't accept it as an answer in this case.
No -- "... do you drink?" is not possible as that would be ... trinken Sie? with capitalised Sie.
You're right that the verb forms etc. for "they" are used for addressing someone formally/politely, but the pronouns etc. are always capitalised in this case, e.g. Sie, Ihnen, Ihre, ....
Oh ok, thanks for the clarification! The capitalization makes a lot of sense to me, as it is quite similar in my native language (although we use the equivalent of 'Ihr' as in the plural of you :) ).
German used to do this as well (probably under French influence) -- in the 1800s or so. So you might come across this in period plays.
Is there a reason "How much wine are they drinking" is not accepted? It gets marked as wrong.
"How much wine are they drinking" is listed as one of the accepted alternatives.
Check to make sure that it was not a listening / "type what you hear" exercise -- it if was a translation exercise and your sentence was nevertheless rejected, I'm not sure what might have happened. If that comes up again, a link to an uploaded screenshot could be helpful.
