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- "老师不是英国人。"
"老师不是英国人。"
Translation:The teacher is not British.
54 Comments
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the reason behind this change?
I don't find the new characters particularly easier to write or recognize (do note that I am a complete neophyte).
China now has a literacy rate around 96%. In the start of the 20th century that number was much smaller and many thinkers/politicians were trying ways to encourage literacy, so they chose to simplify the characters.
The change was applied by Mao Zedong's governmnent in the People's Republic of China territory. That means it was not applied in Taiwan (Republic of China territory), Hong Kong (British territory), and Macau (Portuguese territory), so these regions kept using the traditional characters and still keep using it now.
The only difference is that the traditional once are used in Taiwan and some other Chinese dialects like Cantonese (I guess). I think you should stick only to Mandarin and the simplified characters for now. :)
Some more complexly written characters made major changes: 環 vs 环 are the same in traditional and simplified respectively.
Keep in mind, simplified wasn't invented overnight either. It has been around for centuries as an informal shorthand. As in people got lazy and sort of scribbled a bit in somewhat of a cursive to save time. This resulted in fewer strokes per character, this simplified. The People's Republic of China choose to standardize the shorthands where it made sense. So characters are never going to be super different between the two.
So I wrote "My teacher is not a British person" and it said the correct answer is "My teacher is not an British person". The difference is the n before British but shouldn't it be without a "n", meaning I wrote it correctly?
Why does DL insist that it be "An" British person rather than "a" British person? I can understand using "an" if I wrote Englishman, but "An British person" is incorrect English.
They seem to have changed the above sentence which now says "The teacher is British." which would be more common to avoid the "an"/"a" dilemma. I hope that you reported that. I bet that happened after they changed "a" to "an" for "English person". They just can't win! They need to keep the article as part of the noun "an English person" and "a British person" would both be correct.
Does the setence specify the number of teachers? I tried 'The teachers are not English' and it was rejected, but I think it's a possible translation of that sentence, too.
们 would be added after a noun that denotes a person to make it plural. I do not know if it is ambiguous without it. You certainly cannot tell by the verb which always remains the same for singular and plural. The nouns do not change forms for singular or plural, however in Chinese they often add other words to the sentence to indicate plural, such as "many", "those" or a number specifying how many.
http://mylanguages.org/chinese_plural.php
https://www.duolingo.com/skill/zs/Occupation/tips-and-notes
I have since found out that with the plural marker it is definitely plural, but without the plural marker it can still be plural or singular. Apparently many people just don’t bother to use the plural marker. So you should report it next time.
Well without 们 you can use 都 to denote more than one. Colloquially, it's fine to go without one or both. But when writing properly, without both it's safe to assume it's singular.
521
Does 英国 refer to all of the UK, all of Britain, or just England? Because they are very different terms, yet the key says all are correct...
I looked it up in a few dictionaries. Though the British themselves make a distinction, it looks like in Chinese 英国 can mean either England specifically or the United Kingdom in general. I guess the exact meaning just depends on the context.
It does not necessarily refer to the UK which is 联合王国
So it looks as though when England added a few countries to become Great Britain, China did not feel the need to change the characters yet, but now the UK is different. Practically though, I am sure that some people still use the old characters. Look how many people still say "Holland" for "The Netherlands". Please correct me if I am wrong, native Chinese speakers!
Holland is, however, just a part of the Netherlands. This is just like England which is a part of the UK.
English translation that is expected is wrong. They want "Teacher isn't a English person." Should be "Teacher isn't an English person."
There is a big distinction between "English" and "British" but to the dismay of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish, many use the terms interchangeably.
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I'm still a beginner in Chinese but I think where you are thinking "English person" (because the word "ren" literally translates as "person"), the English meaning of "English person" is covered just by using a word that implies that we are talking about a person. If you say someone is "British" or "American", or "Chinese", then it implies that you mean "this person is this nationality". I know others might be clearer but basically the sense that you are talking about a person is already included in the English, without needing to use the actual word. And they are using British to be more precise, since England is only part of the nation called United Kingdom now.
I think Jacob is saying that Duolingo does accept "a English person" which is not correct in English - it should be "an" rather than "a"
In Chinese, they are not using a demonym though, are they? It would be considered impolite and the teacher's name would be used, I think. I sometimes hear small children talk about their teacher this way, but again it is not very polite and we just chalk it up to the children being young. Teachers don't live at school, after all. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demonym
This should be "The teacher" or "A teacher" or we should include the person's name. Some teacher's do let children call them "Teacher", but that is not the name of the teacher and that is not the intention of the Chinese word to refer to the teacher by name, or is it?
Of course, what do I really know? Try reporting it to see what happens. The more I think about it the more I wonder if that is not common in China, after all?
Nevermind, scroll up someone already said that some accepted answers did include "Teacher is not..."
Professor is not written the same way as teacher in Chinese? If not, what's the difference?
“The teachers aren’t British.” could be reported as also correct. I hope you did not forget the apostrophe in “aren’t” and capitalized “British” as well as the first letter of the sentence.
Strictly speaking, they don't need to. The Duolingo answer-checking algorithm ignores punctuation and capitalization.
Some punctuation is ignored, but not the apostrophe. It might pass as a typo if there are no other typos.
any suggestions why "the teacher is not English" wrong? From the sound of it I thought 英 would be closer to england then to britain
I would never say, "The", I would probably say "my", or "her", or "him", ect.
Perhaps you meant "his" rather than "him" which is not a possessive pronoun, and "etc." rather than "ect" Typos are so easy to make. If the teacher were just someone we had heard about but was not a teacher of me or my friends, I could say "the" when I first say something, but I would probably say "that" or "this" if I were contrasting that teacher with other teachers.
I think you might be trolling, but...
British people live on, or come from, the island of Britain. Britain has three regions, Scotland, England, and Wales. English people live in, or come from, England, Scottish people live in, or come from, Scotland, and Welsh people live in, or come from, Wales. There's also a nearby island called Ireland. Irish people live in, or come from, Ireland.
Hope this helps.
