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- "We don't know the way."
"We don't know the way."
Translation:我们不认识路。
32 Comments
Why do you use "认识“ here and not “知道”? It was my understanding that "认识“ was used in terms of knowing/being acquainted with people, whereas "知道“ was more used for knowing facts or information.
"我们不知道怎么走" is a good alternative. I don't know if Duo accepts it, but it means the same.
The hover-over hints here are insufficient: "way" doesn't suggest "路", yet that's given as the recommended answer.
There's also a weird glitch where it suggested the "answer": "我们不认识路？, 我们不认识路。" which makes no sense because it repeats the same sentence with a question mark. I think this is just a glitch.
Either way I reported both of these problems.
I really wish someone would go through and fix all the hover-over hints...there are numerous exercises where the hints are woefully insufficient, i.e. the necessary words don't even appear in the hints at all.
One of the things I found most useful when first learning Chinese was to realise that learning whole phrases and sentences, not dismantling them (but occasionally substituting a word and seeing if it works, or not), is the most natural way to understand the language.
The tips probably give the literal translation of a character but Chinese is made up of phrases and historical contexts.
In another language on duo they gave the phrase: “the night is dark” to translate and the discussion overflows with enthusiasm from English speakers “and full of terrors!” Etc. That’s what I mean by phrases and historical contexts. You might be able to technically say the night is black just as well but that would be missing the point. Try looking up “phrases Shakespeare invented” to get an inkling. You don’t need to know where it comes from to know and use the phrase, but it is what it is.
So now I just ask: is this how people tend to say it? Are there common variations?
I love some basic Chinese phrases: ting de dong 听得懂 (listen to understand/get it = to hear), shuo bu liao 说不了(speak without success = to be unable to speak). They put things we all understand/experience in ways English gets so cumbersome to translate. It’s not the Chinese that’s flawed but our desire to translate a neat phrase in mandarin into a similarly neat phrase in English.
We’ve been struggling to translate from one language to the other for centuries. There’s a reason we have a word “Chinglish” - capable, intelligent, educated people still get it ‘wrong’ sometimes. Or the idea just doesn’t translate well/neatly.
I grew up hearing “Confusia say” phrases, thinking I was hearing a piece of Chinese wisdom, but the translations were always a huge compromise (clumsy sounding literal translation with a thousand footnotes to reference that background and times the phrase has been used in literature before ... or rephrasing in English so it sounds as good to our ears as it does in 中文 but missing all that nuance and perhaps inadvertently adding our own erroneous ones).
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For those still can't differentiate when to use 认识 and 知道, here it is 我不知道怎么走 我不认识路 So 知道怎么走＝认识路 You can't say 我不知道路 or 我不认识怎么走
Thank you! So in "to know the way", the way is a distinct pre-existing entity and so it's 认识, recognise. In 'know where to go' what we want to know is vague and not clearly defined, so it's 知道, to know.
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Another question in the same lesson accepted 你知道到医院吗 as a translation for "do you know the way to the hospital".
我们不认识路？, 我们不认识路。 That is what it says is the right answer. Is this a glitch??
Trying to understand 怎么走 vs 路. They can be used in the same situations, right? But they need different verbs? You can 认识 路, but you 知道 怎么走? And do you only need 到 if you specify the destination in the sentence? 到医院认识路? 到goes with the destination and shouldn't be separated from it if you reorganize the sentence?
I typed randomly and i got it correct.(btw Ugandan knuckles:yoo pae...fo yo lyf!
I can't figure out why you want to put it there. I can explain better if you explain your reasoning.
迷路 means "to be lost". You do not necessarily have to be lost when you don't know the way to a certain place. But you might be lost, of course. :o)
