"They are doctors."

Translation:他们是医生。

November 20, 2017

38 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/James955669

Women can be doctors too. Please fix this translation to accept the feminine pronoun.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Rabea733910

It was still not accepted as of today. Your comment made me laugh tho


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/shlomiabr

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 :)


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/AbaddonWan

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.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Pietro460054

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".


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/EquanimousLingo

Your pronunciation will improve as you keep on practicing, so don't worry about it so much and keep going.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/mauroemartinez

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.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Alan946894

2020.5.8 The proper characters for angel is 天使「tian1shi3」


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MehmetBekl2

Gender of the subject isn't specified in the English sentence. So 她们 must be true.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/SANDRIKA.S

Hm, is it clear that 'they' is not definitely women. Both 'they' should be applicable!


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/WangQiang510855

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!


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/black-charcoal

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.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/sern98

Why did they not tell us the meaning of the doctor before testing us?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/DurianDeion

Duolingo doesn't seem to teach chinese, this is just learning through trial and error


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Rachel71212

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.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Mikael675635

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


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/bridgetpurple

It's been happening all though the course, especially with the compound words like that


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Gaspar594

Why it says that 她们是医生 is wrong, and that it must be 他 instead of 她, in english "they" can mean both masculine and feminine.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/gsazbon

Can someone explain the indivual meaning of the components of the word Doctor?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/EquanimousLingo

医 is for doctor of medicine, medical science and 生 is for life, to give birth. I would recommend downloading the app called Pleco


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/P4lP5

医 usually deals with medicine/medical field, for instance it's also the first half of hospital "医院”. And, ”生” usually just denotes a person in that field. For instance, student is "学生”: "study person"


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Ricardo890727

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.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/cinnamon2003

I am confused what 是 means in a sentence and how it is supposed to be used.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/MehmetBekl2

It's like am/is/are in English. 他的电话号码是 (Tā de diànhuà hàomǎ shì) : His phone number IS...


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Harry_the_Hyrax

Why not "yi sheng men"?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Pietro460054

You dont need to say that it's more doctors, you can get it from context.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/PSFZ1

we can also translate doctor to 博士


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/GALAXIA575

I agree with MihaikL


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Richard355429

this is what i put. it said i was wrong. showed the woman pronoun.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Zoloa2

I answered the question in the feminine sense and it was marked correct.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/xiaoziliang

Why is "他们很医生” incorrect?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Alan946894

2020.01.10
「很」 is used to connect N with ADJ not a N with another N
For example,
他们很聪明
They are smart.

我很累。/我很累了。
I'm tired. / I'm tired! I've become tired

You need the Duo's 「是」 here


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Andrew.Kono

What's the difference between these two tā's: 他 & 她?


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/CarinaCzy

First one is "he", second one is "she" with the character for "woman" (女 nü)

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