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- "A cute boy reading a book"
"A cute boy reading a book"
Translation:책을 읽는 귀여운 남자아이
43 Comments
So woukd i translate this as 'Reading a book is a cute boy'? This sentence confused me as i wasnt sure which part to start with
There's no verb here; this is just explaining how participles and adjectives are used in relation to a noun
So... "《book-reading cute》 boy" because all of the words (book-reading, cute) are used as adjectives?
Not quite fair to say. It depends more on the construction.
I get your point though -- that it's like in English where:
When treated as adjectives (aka, words that modify noun) they come before. When treated as stative verbs (I am happy, as an example), they come last, and are inflected as a verb.
That does happen to mimic English, as you said, but is incidentally incomplete, because not all adjectives will precede, some will be seen as stative verbs, as we have seen :)
(Just wanting to clarify!)
Because that would be "a boy reading a cute book". The adjective has to go directly before the noun it describes.
They are really pushing the boundaries of English to teach Korean with this one
There's no verb here; this is just explaining the structure that a participle (verb acting as a noun [책을 읽는] comes before an adjective [귀여운])
1252
Wow the structure of this sentence still makes no sense to me even after reading all the comments. I don't see a participle anywhere in this sentence.
Because cute and read both end with the adjective modifier neither are being used as verbs But the example sentence uses reading as a verb. I think one or the other needs to be changed in order for this to make sense. Otherwise people are just memorizing the answer and not the actual grammar rules
How would you know which to prioritize when translating into korean? I entered "귀여운 책을 읽는 남자아이" since in english the adjectives are written from the most "vague" to most specific and "reading a book" seems pretty specific to me. I was wrong. Please help
Note that in "귀여운 책을 읽는 남자아이" the adjective "귀여운" is describing the noun "책을" which translates to "cute book". This makes the translation of your answer as "The boy reading a cute book"
- 151
As punctuation marks are not the strong point in Korean language, to avoid confusion a suffix -고 usually is added to the end of each adjective/verb stem. -고 will act as an English comma.
So:
책을 읽는 귀여운 남자아이 = 귀엽고 책을 읽는 남자아이 = Cute boy reading a book
Without -고, there might be ground for misunderstanding as VonGodinez has rightly pointed out.
It says correct answer is 책... but here it says 책을... I've seen a lot of this discrepancy. I can't tell which one is right, or if both are.
- 742
I'm struggling. Why is it 책을 읽는 and not 읽는 책을 I really can't tell when the modifier comes before or after the noun.
In Korean, the verb always goes last. If you were writing a sentence with 읽다 as the main verb, you would put 책을 before 읽다, and it's the same way with any verbs in Korean, including modifiers. The objects always go before the verb.
- 151
Korean adjectives are in verb form so shouldn't the same rule for listing multiple verbs (clauses) apply to adjectives as well? i.e -고 (and) added to Verb Stem of preceding adjective (adjectival verb).
책을 읽고 귀여운 남자 아이 = cute boy reading a book
Alright let me see if im understanding this modifier thing properly.
책을 읽는 귀여운 남자아이 - A cute boy reading a book
Where [ ] symbolizes a modifier
Does this mean that modifiers can stack?
eg. A cute-fast-smiling boy reading a book - 책을 읽는 귀여운 달리는 웃는남자아이
Is this correct or nonsense? If it is the latter, id appreciate the enlightenment
- 151
Yes. The stacking system applies to adjectives, like it does to verbs because Korean adjectives are basically verbs.
For clarity, you could use the connective particle 고 (attached to the verb stems) to separate the adjectives (just like the 'commas' in English).
책을 읽고 귀엽고 빠르고 뚱뚱하고 웃는 남자아이.
Why was my answer 괴여운 책을 읽는 남자아이 accepted? I realized a bit too late that I got it wrong but duolingo marked it correct?
- 151
Adjective ordering restrictions are virtually non-existent in East and South Asian languages (although adjectives of origin seem to take priority in most of the cases, but that's another matter).
This feature probably applies to Korean to some extent.
My guess is the machine translation tool would read 귀여운 책을읽는 소년 as [귀여운] [책을읽는] 소년 = [cute] [that is reading a book] lad [On dealing with the relative clause apart] --> cute lad (that is) reading a book = A cute lad reading a book.
This would explain why it marked your answer as 'Correct'. (Your answer might be ambiguous, but not wrong.)
If you were to write 귀여운책을 읽는 소년 (no space between 'cute' and 'book') the program would read this as "A lad reading a cute book" and would definitely fault you.
Any feedback from DLG monitors or Korean natives/experts are always more than welcome.
In English "a cute boy" would be more likely to mean "an attractive young-adult man" — is it the same in Korean? Or does 남자아이 always refer to a child?
남자아이 doesn't provide the correct adjective for the specific "《cute boy》translation that you're looking for.
남자 (man) + 아이 (child) = hence, it's translated as a boy.
This is a fragment, not really meant to be translated as a sentence; rather, it's meant to show the interactions between participles, adjectives, and nouns.
