"春天最漂亮。"
Translation:Spring is the prettiest.
32 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
'the' is optional: 'spring is most beautiful' is sufficient, 'the most beautiful' doesn't add anything.
"Spring is the prettiest"???? Prettiest what? Come on Duolingo can you even speak English?
861
Native English speaker here. "Spring is the prettiest." is perfectly normal and natural English.
Don't forget, it comes from context. -"Which season do you like the most?" -"Spring is the prettiest"
Why is there no option to report the solution as being incorrect? Who is Spring? I've never met her.
I dont understand the convention for the superlative (e.g. He was the fastEST runner) . Does it just go without saying?
Was this translated by my 2nd language students? Where is the object in this sentence?
- 861
"Is" is not a transitive verb, it's a copula. The copula takes a compliment. A compliment is not only an object. "I am hungry" is exactly the same, no object, just an adjective as compliment.
We don't say "spring season" in standard English.
We can say "the spring season", but since "season" is already implied in "spring", that's not very common, though it isn't that unusual if we're talking about a fashion season or something like that. Where we use "season" more commonly is to say things like "the rainy season", "the tourist season", etc.
For some reason we can say "spring", "the spring", or "the spring season", but not "spring season". It seems to me that the idiomatic use of the definite article is challenging to people whose first language is an Indian language. Do you agree?
Hi Peace, thanks for replying. I don't disagree with you that "season" is already implied. If the context was Q: Which season is the prettiest? A: Spring.
I could just say "Spring" and that should be enough.
So if I answered with "The spring season is the prettiest" would that be a correct answer?
And yes, the idiomatic use of the definite article is something that doesn't come naturally with people whose first language is from India. I agree with you on that :)
"The spring season is the prettiest" is grammatically correct, and to my mind it's acceptable in standard English, even though the phrase "the spring season" can be considered redundant. I'd personally allow it here, but I don't know if Duolingo does.
Note, however, that there's another term in Chinese, "春季", which also means "spring(time)", and the specific meanings of its two characters are "spring" and "season", respectively.
"Spring is the most beautiful time" was rejected, thought it expressed that spring was superior to perhaps a second contender for 最漂亮.
