"¿Cuántos niños?"

Translation: How many boys?

[mahankr]

What are the intonation rules for asking questions in Spanish? Could someone please give an overview of them?

[mitaine56]

mahankr you take up the voice at the end

[halfyou]

Wow!! Language enthusiasm..o.o lingot

[KrysAnnice]

Hypothetically speaking, lets say I was asked to teach a class and I ask "How many children? How many boys? How many girls?" How do you say that in spanish? "
¿Cuántos niños? ¿Cuántos niños? ¿Cuántas niñas?
How would they know i'm asking boys vs. children total?

[Craig877964]

Subtract the number of girls from the number of children.

[KrysAnnice]

I know how to find out the amount. If I say "Cuantos niños?" How would someone know if I meant "How many boys" or "How many children"? Is there a way to differentiate?

[Craig877964]

Maybe ¿Cuántos machos?

[Jayken]

The robot says cuántos really weird.

[pinkfroggirl]

the robot says everything weird

[DXabier]

It is fine

[Jayken]

It mustve been a glitch because before it was emphasizing the wrong part of the word

[bolbishvili]

It's also sometimes hard to distinguish "niñas" and "niños"

[Claire51]

i mistake it for cuándos. they really sound the same. someone tell me i'm right~

[DXabier]

No, they don't. Moreover, "cuándos" doesn't even exist.

[Claire51]

cuándo∗ ≈when ∗ adverb
http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/cu%25C3%25A1ndo

[Jayken]

Yeah cuándo is a word, but you said cuándos.... But even if you think the 2 words sound the same, in context it's not hard to figure out "¿cuándo niños?" wouldnt have made any sense. :)

[Claire51]

oh oops right sorry i made a mistake. now i see. thank you for your reply~

[ozytodd]

children can mean boys and girls ,yet ninos is boys ,how can they be both the same.
why cant ninas represent children ?

[Jayken]

Niñas can represent children if all the children present are girls. However, if all the children are boys, then you would use niños. And if there are a mix of girls and boys then you would use niños. Even if there are all girls but one boy, you would still use niños when talking about the group of kids. It's just how it works :)

[BKlanguage242]

In spanish, the masculine form of a verb or noun is more dominant. Therefore, when you have a group of children, (girls and boys) the masculine form (niños) will be used. Although it can be confusing,(and sexist) it will be easier to understand once you see other examples. Hope that helped......

[uq.]

did you just call a language rule sexist

dude.

[skylockwood]

why "how many boys are there?" does not work?

[mitaine56]

skylock- Because you translate with 2 words which aren't in the sentence you had to translate. There's no verb in the Duo sentence.

[JustinPspanish]

i did how many boys, wrong and it told me to do how many boys are there, and now it says how many boys are there and got it wrong

[mitaine56]

justin how many boys was a correct answer.

[ymalaver]

It let me get it right and I even wrote it in english