- Forum >
- Topic: German >
- "You can say that again."
"You can say that again."
Translation:Das kann man wohl sagen.
105 Comments
I combined the two suggestions: das kann man wohl sagen and das kannst du laut sagen and went with das kannst du wohl sagen. Is it wrong?
I wrote the same thing and it's saying it's wrong, can a german speaker explain why "Das kannst du wohl sagen" doesn't work? (lingots for an answer <3)
279
Can someone explain to me why we give lingots, to each other? I mean, of what actual use are they? I have accumulated thousands, and never use them!
- 279
@ Sheila351374
People give lingots to show they like or appreciate a post or comment.
Lingots can be used to buy "streak protection" in case one misses practicing one day and does not want to break a streak. One can also get some extra skills like idioms, flirting ...
https://www.duolingo.com/shop .
While some people may not use them at all, others seem to like them quite a bit and use them.
To change idiomatic expressions that have a long tradition is never a good idea. Just use the two first two examples cadilhac suggested and you will be fine.
- 279
Matthiad 1414 The problem is, how is a non native speaker to know that it is an idomatic expression? It would be easier if Duo, had separate exercises for ideomatic expression, because we would know in advance, not to always expect word for word translation!
I second the call for an explanation! Is this an expression that only really works with 'man' or can we replace it with du?
"Das kann man wohl sagen" is an idiomatic expression and it sounds awkward if you change it.
"Wohl" means "again"?? I checked all my dictionaries and couldn't find such a definition.
As Lenkvist points out, it's probably a mistake to try for a literal, word-for-word translation instead of the "sense."
After all, even in English, "You can say that again" doesn't literally mean "I give you permission to say that a second time." Rather, the statement underscores and emphasizes agreement with a previous statement - it means something like "You're right about that!"
Other slang equivalents, besides "You betcha" might be "no kidding" or "You bet your sweet [expletive deleted]."
The problem is that exercises like this make me question my understanding of those particles when they mean/are used to say things different from what was earlier claimed as their meaning.
I have seen "wohl" translated as "possibly", "probably", "of course", "indeed", "actually", "somehow", "quite", "well", "very well", "again" and others (and many of those seem unrelated - when not contradictory), so that I don't really have a clue about its 'core meaning', and if you combine it with other particles, its meaning can change further, and in idioms it can play the part of yet more different articles, for still more confusion.
This combined with the way Duolingo 'introduces' these to us makes for very poor learning, imho.
While it can be confusing at first, if you are unaware that a word can be used very differently in different context, you will find it much harder to understand what people say or what you read. So it is important to be exposed to these nuances.
"Du kannst das wieder sagen" was accepted, so it is actually possible to use wieder.
Yes, grammatically, but it does not hit the nail of the meaning and the context in which you would say it.
- 2234
Just for the sake of learning, would "das kann man erneut sagen" be totally wrong?
And could I have a quick recap about erneut, wieder, and so on?
No problem. I asked my native speaker, so I am sure. Hopefully they will accept it.
Grammatically, I have no objection with your sentence, but nobody would say this.
You shouldn't expect a direct translation here. Another way of saying "You can say that again" is "you betcha!" (Unless I'm mistaken about English). You might recognise "wohl" from "jawohl", it is used here to give the sentence extra confirmation.
"Das kannst du laut sagen" is accepted, and from my experience also the more common use of this as an idiom in everyday conversation.
- 1445
How many people does Duolingo actually employ to take care of so many different languages with all those dialects? This is the first time in 22 years that I've stuck with relearning a language I've loved. I am not satisfied with just getting by with safe sentences.
I don't think there are many real people involved at all, besides users/moderators. It is my guess that there is a computer program or algorithm behind most of it. When we report something, there may be some admin employees getting involved, but I highly doubt there is a large staff behind the scenes. It is a free learning platform, after all.
There are computers and algorithms for the website itself but all the sentences and translations are made by real people, spending hours working for free so you can learn their native language for free. Per language, there are 3-10 contributors, real people, working on the course and there are 46 courses at the moment, thus a free staff of between 138 and 460 people). Check incubator.duolingo.com to learn more about how it works.
Duo simply counts translations as right or wrong. All it can do is "clingk" or "to-dunk," not give explanations as to what we did wrong and why. Being right grammatically and saying things the way natives most commonly say them are two different things. I think both are useful to know, and comments from other users are part of the process. Duo is somewhat of a machine, and not live--though there are live people behind it--so what can you expect? And anyway it's free and I've never found better. And they are constantly, though slowly improving it. Discontinuing the heart system was one improvement. Now you don't have to feel punished for a mistake. You just try again. I think it works for me because I am not a perfectionist. I grab what I can and let the rest slide by, and go back to it later.
I put Das kann man nochmals sagen, and Duo said is not right. Why can't I use nochmals in this sentence?
Did you report it? If it's really wrong, then maybe it's because this is an idiom, and really the "Das" needs to come first for emphasis. But that's a guess and I can't say for sure that it's wrong.
I still do not understand why "wieder" is not accepted.
After all, we do not know the context here.
It could be meant " you dare say that again",
It could be meant " you betcha"
But it could be just in a plain context "you can say that again"
Again we do not even know the context, and unless a context is provided, other translations should be accepted.
That is why this section (adverbs 2) is becoming more and more frustrating every day. I am SICK OF LOSING HEARTS FOR STUPID TRANSLATIONS LIKE THIS.
I just reported this problem to Duolingo yesterday.
I wonder whether anyone from Duolingo support even hears many people's complaints about this section.
koyunlar, try not to get too frustrated and not aggravated. Remember that Duolingo is like a gift for us to use. Do not forget to appreciate that. Also, I am certain that the support is trying their best to improve every flaw and they do listen to people's complaints. Just imagine how many people all have something to say and want to be heard, give the duolingo support a bit of time to take care of things.
Thank you Germandy for your encouraging and supportive replies.
I understand that there are a lot of idioms in German, and learning them is certainly not straightforward and will require time and patience.
However, exposing a learner to so many idioms in one section is not a good way to teach a language at all. I honestly feel that I am not learning anything in this section.
All I am doing is copying Duolingo's strict and (excuse me for saying this) stupid translations to a word document. Whenever I see the same question later again, I just paste it into the answer part. This is simply because I do not understand most of the translations in this section.
I keep losing hearts, sometimes I lose my last heart in the last (the 20th) question in a given lesson, and it sucks to start the same lesson all over again. Again, I only find myself copying and pasting translations just so that I can finish this section and move on to other sections.
This is the first section that I feel this way. I feel that in all other modules and sections up to now, I felt I have learnt something, and even if I had to start all over again in the past sections, it was no problem, because I felt I learnt a lot by doing the same lesson again.
I do not feel the same for this section at all.
Thank you again for listening :)
I feel your pain, and I agree with you to some extent. I keep word docs with the precise wording Duolingo accepts when I feel that the question is either unfair, wrong, or just so long that there are too many ways to deviate from what they'll accept, since they don't have the luxury of a reasonable bilingual making a fair judgment call.
Because of this element there's no way for even a perfectly bilingual person to ace all the units on the first try, so I think my solution is reasonable.
It is called "learning curve". Painful? I agree, but do you WANT to learn German or what? Chin up!
I also enter adverbs with trepidation, but tell myself that if it was easy, it would not be much of an exercise. That sometimes helps
You know, I study Duolingo via a smartphone and don't use any word documents: the app simply wouldn't allow you to copy sentences. The difference is that I want to learn, so I learn whatever it takes. 3 hearts is certainly enough to cover some rare awkward translations. The rest is your bad command of language.
the translations made by users are a gift from them to duolingo. so no, duolingo is not exactly a gift
This German sentence "Das kann man wohl sagen" would not translate as "you dare say that again", I think. Also, I think one has to be familiar with how the sentence "you can say that again" is used in English. In my opinion, it does always have that kind of context to it, and cannot be meant plain in some way. A plain version would be the question "Can you say that again?", but not the sentence.
However, I can totally understand your frustration with sentences like this that cannot be taken literally. Especially because I'd say there are more different ways of expressing this in German than in English. For example "Das kannst du (aber) laut sagen!" or even "Na, aber hallo!" and "Aber sowas von!"
On second thoughts I am not sure it really means the same as "You betcha!" - I would translate that as "Darauf kannst du wetten!", "Darauf kannst du dich verlassen!" or "Da kannst du Gift drauf nehmen!"
Hi Germandy, about your comment on the comparison I made; I compared "You can say that again" with "You betcha!" based on the idea that they are both strong ways of agreeing with someone. Are you all right with that comparison or do you feel that the extra idiomatic expression is confusing?
To my German ears all your additional examples mean the same thing: agreeing with someone in a more than obious matter. You hear "Genau" a lot in Germany, too.
- 188
Another thing good about this app is, I improve my English while studying German. Thanks to all who contribute with both more questions, arguments, alternatives and answers. All helps a lot.
look at it this way (i did not read all the way down, so excuse me if i'm repeating stuff), u are not actually expected to "repeat/say it again" in reply to that sentence. a german idiom has been translated using an english idiom. if u think abt it, the english idiom doesn't make sense, its just an expression.
but still, i'm pretty sure that it's wrong at some level, because the "man" in german is impersonal, the english "you" here is not.
'du kannst das wiederholen' is more appropriate as adding 'sagen' doesn't seem to make sense
Yes, Duo accepted "Du kannst das wiederholen" because it is a correct translation, although the idiomatic translation is probably preferable.
I thought it should be also, but my answer was rejected. Can anyone explain why changing the word order makes this incorrect?
Thanks!
"(Das) Kann man wohl sagen" is an idiomatic expression, hence you cannot change it.
You don't need to say "das"?
so someone can just day "Kann man wohl sagen"?
Thanks for all your answers on this thread
Why is Du kannst das erneut sagen incorrect? Erneut is the first word I learned meaning Again
All these questions about other possibly correct ways to say this... In English there is pretty much only one way to say it, or only one way that is commonly used. I'm guessing that this particular sentence is worded this particular way in German because this is what is used much of the time. Or?
I am happy to just memorize this one, because it sounds good, and I'll pick up other versions along the way.
So... A lot of options... wieder, erneut, wohl, laut, etc.... How was I supposed to know ¬¬
I read all the comments. All of them try to translate "You can say that again" literally. So yes: Literally it means: "Du kannst das noch mal sagen." or "Du kannst das wieder sagen." But Germans won't understand what you mean. Because either in English or in German they use an idiom, to express, that your statement was very good.
And in German you have several idioms to translate "You can say that again.", which have exactly the same meaning as the english idiom:
- Das kannst Du wohl sagen.
- Das kannst Du laut sagen.
- Das kann man wohl sagen
- Kann man wohl sagen.
I just had "das kannst du wohl sagen" rejected. Duolingo isn't usually worried about capitalisation. Should I report it?
Frank800295, your first example, "Das kannst Du wohl sagen", is not commonly used!
- 1390
btw, is "you can say that again" an idiom that means something like "You are right" in English?
The word „man“ belongs to the indefinite pronouns. They are written uncapitalized.
„The main indefinite pronouns are:
alle (all) andere (other) beide (both) einige (some) ein bisschen (a bit) ein paar (a couple) jeder (each) jemand (someone) kein (none) man (one) mancher (some) mehrere (several) niemand (no one)“
- 1390
I think this means something like "that's probably right" or "you are probably right", instead of talking about that you may say that again. Am I correct?
I second this question, I would really like to get an explanation to this (is it just fixed because it's an idiom?) since I can't get in touch with "my native speaker" (just learned this term in another post here:) at the moment. I'm always doing this wrong because this word order somehow feels more natural to me and it's getting really frustrating.
It is idiomatic and therefore has a long tradition: you cannot change a word of it.
- 1735
Starting the sentence with the verb, "Kannst du..." as you say, turns it into a question: "can you...?", which is not what this problem is asking for.
- 279
@ Ninon.de.Lenclos
"Kannst du das wiederholen" = "Can you repeat that?" , so it would be OK as a question but not as a statement.
Even if you were not using an idiom for "You can say that again" but were simply telling someone "You can repeat that" you would have to change the word order to " Du kannst das wiederholen"
Would the word order "Man kann das wohl sagen" be obviously "foreign" to a native speaker? I'm trying to work out why Duo has marked it wrong.
Because it is an idiom, a set locution. May be, Duolingo should mark set locutions in a special way or put it in a bonus skill.
- 650
Read through the comments and one interpretation is missing. The english expression seems to be one of agreement. The german translation with the word "wohl" could also mean the opposite. In the sense that you may say it, but it isn't true. If you translate it with "laut" it shows consent. I think it is quite an unique lesson
- 453
Please, could anybody explain to me why "Man kann das wohl sagen" is not correct? Thank you
- 262
What does 'wohl' mean? Secondly, this is a correct idiomatic translation of the english phrase, right? I mean can we use this as an idiom the same way we do in English or ist it just a literal translation?
- 279
@ Aleema-Imran
"Wohl" is one of those words that has a lot of different meanings depending on the context and how it is used in a sentence. The sentence above is an Idiom. It could also be translated as "You/one could say so.". But I don't know if Duo would accept that.
Just like quite a few words in English. Just think of the word " right". It can mean "correct", a direction as in "turn right", a description in " the right hand ", even meaning something along the lines "you can't be serious", "you are really wrong " when used in the phrase "yeah, right"
Basically, it is an expression that means that you really/very much agree with what someone said.
https://www.dict.cc/?s=wohl this has a whole list of meanings for " wohl "
Good idea. Please mark the idiomatic expressions, Duo. Just like it's raining cats and dogs, non native English lerners won't know the meaning straight away.
"Das kann man wieder sagen" was not accepted, although i am pretty sure it should have been
- 706
das kann man wohl sagen means you may say that. Dont ever pay duolingo, its misleading you, which is criminal.
