"她生病了，在房间里睡觉。"
Translation:She's sick. She's sleeping in the room.
22 Comments
Duolingo needs to stop grading my english. I get it wrong just because I dont use an article. I said "She is sick, she is in a room sleeping" but thats not good enough english for them. In order to get one right I have to read their mind I suppose.
Its beta software (still under development). Don't be too harsh with them. But I agree. They should not judge the English in a Chinese course.
1448
I have done plenty of beta courses, and none of them is as obsessed with my English as the Chinese course.
They also can't anticipate all slightly wrong English translations that still convey the intended meaning. If you can't read minds, neither can they. Be understanding.
I also struggled about this point with my German course so much. But as a non-native English speaker, I think it's also quite good to learn how to use the articles properly. But I also think that Chinese course is too harsh about little mistakes we made.
Hard without context but in English its rarely right to refer to a room without some sort of descriptor.
It accepted 'She is sick, in the room sleeping'. My question is why 生 is used, the hover clue says it means 'give birth to'. How does that fit in?
She fell sick
She has contracted an illness
She has grown ill
She got sick
She became sick
... there are many ways to put this.
I think the 生病 is referring to contracting or incubating an illness (which to us seems unnecessarily medical and technical perhaps ...but if you look for it we have these in English too).
"生病" is a compound word, I'm not sure if the "生" part of it has to do with "health" or "coming in to existence" (it can mean both) either way it's probably best just to think of it as the compound word meaning "become ill" and not as two separate ideas.
In three prefious sentences 'she has fallen ill' was accepted. Suddenly, in this sentence it was not accepted and corrected to 'she has gotten ill'... As far as I understand, that's not a good way to say it.
So does the 在 here indicate location or continuous action? I thought it indicates location (在房间里 - in the room) and put "she is sick she sleeps in the room" but that is marked as wrong.
It does apply to both location and action that is occuring. If 在 is before a verb it indicates an action in progress. If you are using the PC based course, the tip is in 'Weather'. So in this case it should be for location. I believe your answer was marked wrong because it is not the wording they want.
If 在 indicates location, "she is sick she sleeps in the room" should be accepted.
- 557
Hm....
- She is sick. She now sleeps in the room.
- She is sick. She is now sleeping in the room.
现在 = "now"
But just 在 is referring to the location where she is sleeping; "in the room". So "now" is incorrect here.
- 139
Duolingo, please let us use any article in the listening lessons. There's simply no information to know whether it's a he or a she. =p
- 57
"Le" seems so randomly applied in answers where state change or emphasis (or both) might apply, it's kicking my backside. I don't know if there's a distinction I'm missing or if the Duo ridgid first-cut answers are just messing with my head.
I wrote She's sick, she's sleeping in a room but NO. I NEED to put an AND otherwise the sentence completely changes. Duolingo can be less stricter on the sentence structure and grammar
