"这个七百三十二块五毛。"
Translation:This is 732.50 Yuan.
31 Comments
I don't think this is a helpful exercise for new learners, as it is unnecessarily confusing-- the translation should either be "732 dollars and 50 cents", or "732 yuan and 5 mao" for consistency's sake. I personally think the first option would be a better teaching opportunity (and deserves a note in the "Tips and Notes" section for that lesson), as the equivalency between 5 mao = 50 cents can be confusing at first. I'm a native Mandarin speaker no longer living in a Chinese-speaking country, and certainly that's a tidbit it took me a while to wrap my head around.
This exercise doesn't actually challenge the user to understand numbers
"this costs 732 yuan and 5 mao" was marked wrong and the correct translation was given as "This costs 732 yuan and 50 cents." I don't see how yuan is ok but mao is not. Seems pedantic
For those that don't recognise it, the 伍 on the bank note is an alternate form of 五 used in formal financial records to prevent alteration. Similar for other numbers too.
The problem does not lie with the mao, but with the number. For instance, "San kuai yi mao" means "3.10" and not "3.01".
This course generally in my experience doesn't accept "kuai" for "yuan" in English, so it seems consistent for it to not accept "mao" for "jiao" either.
If you're using Duolingo on the web rather than the phone app, you sometimes have to type an answer rather than tap on a limited number of elements.
Is the correct answer RMB or yuan? 1. Characters are too small to read easily. 2. Only someone with previous knowledge of Chinese would be able to do these exercises, because they assume that the student knows the meaning of the characters as the characters are identified. It is not a teaching method for beginners.
I've been thinking that as well. I do have some previous exposure to basic Chinese as well as characters (traditional) and I've wondered how someone with no prior knowledge would do.. To be fair though, it's hard to teach Chinese and Japanese using the Western model, since different characters mean different things in combinations, or different places in the sentence. In the case of Japanese (where I have more knowledge) subjects usually have to be inferred, and the characters will be pronounced completely differently, depending on their on and kun usage, and in different combinations. My training is in linguistics, and I haven't thought of a better way to present either language to speakers of a English. Sometimes the best way is just to be less analytical, memorize the usage in the sentences, and gradually let the language/writing system sink in. Frustrating, but perhaps more productive.
This is my first time learning Chinese or any East Asian language. I can see they're using an inductive method, so I just keep using trial-and-error and a lot of practice to figure out the right answer. I think I'd probably learn conversational Chinese more quickly with the Latin alphabet, but I think it's cool that each time I use this program I learn to recognize more and more characters. I hope to take a formal course soon.
pinyin(the latin alphabet for mandarin) isn't helpful. Mandarin chinese has far less sounds than english and thus many many more homonyms. This makes writing in pinyin unintelligible without prior knowledge of the conversation being had.
Mandarin has 29 phonemes(7 vowels & 22 consonant) but English has a 44 total, almost double that. Furthermore you can put more consonants together to in more ways than in Mandarin. this free link explains it pretty well (i don't recommend paying for their premium content it's not worth it
add https:// to the front of the url i cut it off because Duo has been censoring links to outsite sources for some reason.
Each syllable can be pronounced five different ways though due to the tone, which English doesn't have. Unless you pretend Chinese doesn't have tones it doesn't really have more homonyms than English. Pinyin without tones isn't very helpful. Writing in pinyin with tones is as intelligible as spoken Chinese. You can't speak in characters. I'm not even a fan of pinyin but it has its uses.
It's fine as a teaching method for beginners. It's just not a complete teaching method. You gain your previous knowledge the first several times you see the characters, or you learn them in one of your other courses, books, apps, websites, etc.
If you were to speak Mandarin in Canada or the United States and the article cost $732.50, would the structure of the sentence be any different?
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I would be surprised if there is any difference. Have you any experience of not being understood?
It is also possible that some communities do not speak Mandarin. 20 years ago it was mainly Cantonese in Toronto and Vancouver, but I heard Mandarin has become main today. New York City is very mixed with Cantonese, Hokkien, Wenzhou, etc. alongside Mandarin. I don't know about other areas.
It seems most "Chinese" here in Australia now can speak Mandarin whether or not they also speak a regional variety. I see more and more signs in simplified Chinese these days too. In Chinatown it's probably 50/50 simplified and traditional and outside Chinatown it's probably mostly simplified. I regularly meet people from Guangzhou, Taiwan, and Malaysia and they all seem to know enough Mandarin whether or not they also speak Cantonese or Hokkien. (Most of the Tibetans in my area don't know any Mandarin at all though.)
No. Exactly the same. I learned the Chinese for numbers and prices from the Chinese owners of the convenience store next to my old workplace in Australia and we always said "kuai" just like in China and Taiwan.
It's probably a bit different if you're dealing with multiple currencies.
It looks complex but its easy and fun and that is because it is in the lecture
I heard a pause between 七百 and 三十二. To avoid misunderstanding, please note that you don't have to, or must not, stop here.
I think for this course all the audio is computer generated. That's why characters with two pronunciations are often spoken using the wrong one. Some of the other courses use actual voice recordings.
