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- "They are doctors."
"They are doctors."
Translation:他们是医生。
28 Comments
Can someone share his wisdom regarding characters and pronunciation? So several characters can have the same sound (yī for example). Do native speakers figure it out by context? Also, Can one character have several sounds?
Thanks :)
yes,for example： 衣，一，医 all share the same pronunciation “yi” in the first tone。 ’一’also has 3 different pronunciations， ‘yi’ in first tone and the second tone and the fourth tone， in ‘一个’ it sounds in second tone，means one thing； in “一” which means number 1，then it sounds in first tone； in ‘一心一意’， which means concentrated on something， the first‘一’ sounds in the fourth tone， the second‘一’in the second tone. But basically, you don't need to care about the tones very much, every Chinese can understand you no matter which tone you use. many Chinese characters have different pronunciations completely different for example the Chinese character ‘藏’， in '西藏' which means tibet， it sounds like ‘zang’ in the fourth tone， but in ‘藏起来’which means hide， it sounds like ‘cang’ in the second tone， then you should be careful.
Chinese has experienced in the last millenium a shrinking in word lenght, and now 90% of chinese words are monosyllabic, so many words got to have the same pronounce. There is a whole poem based just one phoneme "shi".
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Everything you say is right. That's the difficult part of Chinese, and not only context determines what meaning has the syllable, sometimes it depends of what is attached to it. 天，Sky, 天师, Angel.
Your pronunciation will improve as you keep on practicing, so don't worry about it so much and keep going.
No, native speakers can hear the difference in the 4 tones: è,é,ē,ě. The "e" can be replaced by any other vowel you can think of, but it was just the only way i could show all the accent marks.
Hm, is it clear that 'they' is not definitely women. Both 'they' should be applicable!
Gender of the subject isn't specified in the English sentence. So 她们 must be true.
A small doubt: I knew 他 refers（he) and 她 refers (she）but how to translate (they) ? The question is 'They are doctors' , so how to decide whethet to use 他们 or 她们 ？ If there is any reference to 'they' then we can decide based on the gender but this question doesn't have that info!
I think that it takes whichever. In general, youd use the masculine ta for a group of people or men, and the feminine ta for a group if women.
医 is for doctor of medicine, medical science and 生 is for life, to give birth. I would recommend downloading the app called Pleco
Duolingo doesn't seem to teach chinese, this is just learning through trial and error
I've done Spanish and German on Duolingo as well, and it happens there too. It seems it's just Duo's language teaching methodology. But you can always touch the underlined words for translations.
Yeah so many trails and errors. For example the drag and drop lessons. Would be really nice if they typed the English word for it aswell. I know this word is that.. but i don't know what it means.. learning slow and steady
It's been happening all though the course, especially with the compound words like that
If you want to know the meaning of the word just press on the chines word
So, one question, should I use 他 or 她? Is it like in romance languages? For example, in French the masculine gender is used in situations like this one.
You dont need to say that it's more doctors, you can get it from context.
I am confused what 是 means in a sentence and how it is supposed to be used.
It's like am/is/are in English. 他的电话号码是 (Tā de diànhuà hàomǎ shì) : His phone number IS...
