- Forum >
- Topic: Dutch >
- "Hij heeft heel veel huisdier…
25 Comments
Lots of UK English speakers would say "He has a great many pets" (I also find it closer to the original).
I completely agree and your example is a much better use of standard English
Duo is unlikely to add it unless you report it using the report button......
apart from the fact that, once again, my correct sentence was marked as incorrect, in UK English it would not be correct to say "a whole lot of ..." should Duolingo not allow for bot UK standard English as well as American English?
Worse, "a whole lot of" is very much a specific regional American dialect. And yes, I do know Led Zeppelin wrote "Whole Lotta Love" on a houseboat on the Thames, but that still doesn't make it standard English ;-)
661
Come on Duo, I'm getting sick of having to remember to type a very bad Americanised form ("he has a whole lot of pets") for the answer to this, when as many other people have pointed out, the answer "He has a great many pets" is perfectly correct and proper ENGLISH for this sentence.
Absolutely - couldn't agree more. If we're talking about English, let's have good English and while we're on the subject, how long has bike been a verb? Why do we have to remember to say 'I like to bike' rather than 'I like to cycle'?
- 393
The only available solution is "He has a whole lot of pets". That is not how it would be expressed in UK English. "He has a great number of pets" or "He has very many pets" would be preferable.
Whole lotta love to y'all!
"he has a great many pets" should be quite acceptable. Error to cause the program to reject it.
'How does this make sense in English?' This is perfectly good English, actually. 'Very many' means 'a very large amount of'.
'Many' & 'few' count things; 'a lot of' or 'some' describe non-discreet measure: area, time, volume, effort. - "X amount of people" while a popular trope of collective mentality, makes no sense... unless, say, they were pulped & measured by volume.
Things with discernibly separate individuality deserve numbering, even though Ellsworth Toohey has been busy in America for generations, preparing our minds, even before 'Idiocracy' became a meme.
- 128
Very many and so many do not mean the same thing. Very many = "a great many". So many = "such a great many" and requires further qualification. For example:
He has (very) many pets. Does he have too many pets? No, but he has so many pets that he needs a bigger house.
- 398
"many pets" was also declined and I think it is plain stupid, because now Duo has to prove that my "many" is less than his "a lots of", or admit that he's being a dick once again.
- 128
The male speaker's pronunciation is driving me nuts. We get two words together: heel veel. He pronounces them hail, vill. Really?
And, while I'm at it, huisdieren becomes huiszieren as if he's been at the sherry before speaking.
I don't understand the difference between "heel" and "zeer". They both mean "very". Please, explain.
- 284
Shouldn't "a whole load of" be accepted here? To me this sounds far more natural in English.
"He has a sh*tload of pets" - also rejected :-(
"He has a ton of pets"- accepted :-D
I also put the same answer as Longavilleand feel it is a more idiomaic answer.
