"什么礼物不能送给中国人?"
Translation:What gifts cannot be given to Chinese people?
78 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
What gifts should not I give to Chinese people? This answer is awkward, and not natural grammar. Should read, "What gifts should I not give to Chinese people?" You also need more allowable answers to all your questions when the answer is required in English. On a side note, Engish is much more flexible to the placement of time than you are allowing in most of the questions.
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"What gifts can you not give to a Chinese person?" Still reported wrong as of 2019-03-26. Reported.
Sometimes when I read the discussion, I want to scream with frustration. We are learning Chinese here but the discussion are always about how bad Duo's English translation. I focused in my Chinese study. I'm busy in memorising the words stroke by stroke . I don't care about the English translation here.
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It'd be great to have two tabs in discussion forums, one purely to discuss questions regarding the language taught, the other for everything else e.g. technical issues, dearth of alternatives in the accepted translations list, and so on.
And ideally an adjustable 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25 speed for listening as well.
I couldn't have said it better. If you want to learn proper English then I hate to break it to you but you're on the wrong course. I am here to learn Chinese, not English so who cares if this is something a native English speaker would say or not! To understand or differentiate between certain characters it's actually better to translate in a more literal way, otherwise you won't get the context. At least that's how I see it.
All through my schooling I asked lots of questions, went on tangents that curiosity took me on. My grades were not as good as the students who were like "sponges". They memorized what the teacher said and then spit it out. They usually got better grades. Later in life I run into the sponge people. Most of the time I have been more successful. I'm not here to get through the Mandarin course. I want it to stick and have some usefulness in my life. I'm almost 60 years old and a lesson I learned was I learn as much from the side material that benefits me later in life than just the syllabus. I like the discussions on the parallels between English and Mandarin and other languages. I took a history class on the 1920s. The teacher played some swing music from that era. I liked the sampling enough to learn to dance and play instruments which lead me to making friends that I never would have known.
What's frustrating for English speakers is that we can't move on with the course unless we agreed to write the translation the way Duolingo wants it, as terrible as it sounds. And we kept on hearing that annoying wrong tune even though it should have been correct. What I did though, is starting to take screenshots of the horrible translation and just wrote it exactly as is. Otherwise I can't move on to the next lessons.
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My experience is actually that the Chinese course has overall a broader acceptance of English answers than many of the other DL courses, and that is one of the contributing reasons why I am enjoying this Chinese course so much. Granted, it's not perfect and there's always room for improvement but nevertheless it's a pretty amazing course to be able to access freely.
Wow, I have HSK 5 and am about to take HSK 6 and I am continuously failing these quizzes. I think it's clear that whoever is writing the English translations for these sentence is not proficient in English and is not allowing enough flexibility for the answers. Time can be placed in the beginning and end of a sentence in English.
"What gifts are inappropriate to give Chinese people?" Is the true meaning of the Chinese sentence. "I can not give" implies that there is some law or rule that is restricting you from giving the gift; obviously not the intended meaning here.
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Maybe you're right, but surely the English should be "should not give" or "best not to give" rather than "can not give"
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My understanding is giving a green hat indicates that person has had an unfaithful partner, but I don't know the story behind it. I know the whole 四 sounds like 死 thing, but does anyone know why the green hat means that?
For the emotionally labile amongst us whom imagine that a language app which is largely occupied by freeloaders can simply manifest a bug-free experience, just like that, are welcome to flush themselves back down the toilet pipe they floated in on. You are aware that this is a BETA version, right? REPORT your alternate suggestions and otherwise STFU. Duolingo has approved 8 of my alternate responses in just the past week! Fabulous work! If we can channel our criticisms constructively we can have this in ALPHA as quickly as BETA appeared. And I, for one, am so grateful for the appearance of Mandarin here on Duolingo. 谢谢!
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On the flip side, it could be that the system might not do enough to ensure people know they're sign up for a beta course and what that's going to mean.
And I have changed my opinion. This course DOES suck. Thanks for the correction about versions, too!
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1) 送终 sòng zhōng (arrangement of proper burial ceremony); 2) 时钟 shí zhōng (clock).
The last 2 chinese characters are of similar sound zhōng (homonyms). The character 送 means to give.. So if one is giving a clock /watch it is 送钟 sòng zhōng , which has identical sound to 送终.
It is now apparent that this is particularly inauspicious. What I personally practise when giving a watch to a Chinese person is to request a payment for the watch perhaps 5 cents or 10 cents. As such this becomes a sale at 99.9999% discount and not a gift. So it is now not 送终
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Is there any reason why the translation in English is in the passive voice while the question in Chinese is in the active voice? This really is annoying.
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There is no personal pronoun in the chinese and any version of the active answers is very un-natural English
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I had to Google it to: https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/things-not-give-chinese-new-year.htm
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What gifts should one not give to a Chinese person?
It's sad that was marked wrong. Reported June 2021.
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"What gifts cannot be given to Chinese people" is now duolingo's suggested English answer 28Jan'22