"你不吃饭。"
Translation:You do not eat rice.
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True. However, similar to how the English colloquial expression "to break bread" doesn't necessarily mean a meal with bread, just as the standard "昼ご飯" [hiru-gohan] or " 晩ご飯 " [ban-gohan] in Japanese doesn't necessarily mean a meal [lunch/dinner] with rice and just as "souper" in French doesn't necessarily mean a meal with soup (Cf. 你喝汤。), so too 你吃饭 in Chinese doesn't necessarily mean a meal with rice. Duolingo simply accepts both, perhaps for pedagogical reasons it follows a pattern: 我不吃南瓜。(nánguā=pumpkin; written during Halloween weekend)
Also consider 你吃顿饭 [dùn fàn] which refers literally to "a meal" (or 饭点 [fàn diǎn])
1140
It is funny that 吃饭 can be translated as "eat" without "rice". This time I translate "you do not eat" and it is marked WRONG. DL seens to be unstable.
I would be curious about that as well. Any native speakers perhaps who can help us out? :)
While I'm not sure about this particular example you mention, this source lists some 'markers' and other ways of expressing when an action occurs https://www.writtenchinese.com/past-present-future-tenses-mandarin-chinese/
To express that "ing" in english you would have to add a character that modifies the sentence meaning "在” ( Zai4) 你在吃饭/你不在吃饭.
2020
It seems most posters here already know more about fàn than duolingo.
For the beginners such as me, I'd like to point out "The chinese's idea of having fàn is to eat (rice)".