"他们没有女儿。"
Translation:They don't have daughters.
44 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It's an unusual thing to say, but it's not out of the question.
"Have got" is weird for American English, but normal for British. And for "They have not got daughters" you'd need a very specific context, like where you're emphasizing the assertion to somebody who assumes they do have daughters.
Depending on the discourse context, dialect, speech register, and so on, people could say "They don't have a daughter," "They don't have daughters," "They don't have any daughters," "They haven't a daughter," "They have no daughter," "They haven't got a daughter," "They have got zero daughters," and lots of other variations.
1801
While the sentence doesn't indicate how many, it is more common in English to say and sounds more natural to say "they don't have any daughters", as opposed to "they don't have any daughter".
"They don't have a daughter" would be correct for the singular (as you say the Chinese doesn't indicate how many) The reason "any daughter" doesn't sound natural is because "any" is used in front of nouns to refer to indefinite or unknown quantities; all countable nouns (e.g. apples, chairs, daughters...) are in plural and all uncountable nouns (e.g. money, bread, etc.) are in the "singular".
370
It would be "I don't have a daughter". "I don't have any" is always followed by a plural noun.
"They have no daughters" equals "They don't have daughters" and should be accepted. The main solution is incorrect English, that is "They have not got daughters." It is not slang,, but wrong usage, and therefore, the correct solution should be "They have no daughters" or secondly "They don't have daughters.
432
As I’ve noticed all the word pictures referring to females have the 女 symbol (either wide or narrow version) as in mama, older sister, milk, etc. I’m just guessing, but it looks like daughter is made up of 2 units that mean “second female”
57
anyone else having trouble typing "女儿" on their keyboard? The only thing I'm able to type is "奴儿“
1764
The pinyin for 女 is “nǚ” rather than "nǔ". The u with two dots represents a different vowel sound from the u without dots, so they are treated as separate letters. On the keyboard, you would type "nv'er" instead of "nu'er" in order to get the characters ”女儿“.
Asked a China native why "They do not have a daughter" is incorrect.
You have to look at that as "any daughters" because there is no qualifier. Only if the noun exists would you use a qualifier (as in: "There are 2 girls standing there" or "there is a girl standing there"). If there is a "non-existence" you would simply use the translation of "any NOUNs" (as in "there are no girls standing there" instead of "there is not a girl standing there").
Language nuance.