"Who is this person?"
Translation:这个人是谁？
81 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I think it is more sharp. Like, Who is this person?! Rather than, Who is he/she?
是谁 （shì shéi） 谁啊 （shéi a） 这是谁啊 （zhè shì shéi a） 这个人是谁 （zhè shì gè shì shéi）
Why is this word order allowed, but when I put it the same way for "your father is who?" it was wrong and said the order should be "who is your father".
那 means "that" so what you've written would translate better as "Who is that?" 这 means "this" not "that".
Yeah they should decide how literal they need the translations to be, form a policy about it, communicate it to all the question writers and STICK TO IT! You know, even though this thing is free, I still feel ripped off sometimes.
70
@the1best that would technically translate as 'Who is this' but the grammar is incorrect. The 人 that needs to be placed makes it translate as 'WHO'. If you had just the 这个 on its own it would be referring to more of an object I think. Hope this helps! :)
Why "shei shi ni da baba" is ok but "shei shi zhe ge ren" is wrong? Can anyone please explain?
In English, questions have to begin with a question word, that's why both start with "who". But in Chinese, you replace the word you're asking for by the question word.
谁是你的爸爸 - lit. WHO is your dad? - answer: 他是我的爸爸 - HE is my dad.
这个人是谁 - lit. This person is WHO? - answer: 这个人是我的爸爸 - This person is MY DAD.
Sorry this shed some light but was also a bit confusing so I want to clarify. 这个人是谁 literally translates to "This person is who", but since it is the more common expression, it translates to "who is this person" in English (since that is the common way of saying it in English). So when asked to translate "who is this person to Chinese", you don't say "谁是这个人“ (literally who is this person, since that is a weird word order in Chinese, just like "This person is who" is weird in English. Instead, you say 这个人是谁, lit. "This person is who", but normatively translating to who is this person.
It is disappointing that one has to trawl through comments to find this answer; and that the UIX of Duolingo doesn't already provide it; instead you have to get the answer wrong and then go looking to find outwhy it's wrong…
Am I correct in understanding you to say that since it would be grammatically incorrect to answer: 我的爸爸是这个人 - lit. "MY DAD is this person" therefore it is also grammatically incorrect to ask: 谁是这个人？
I have the exact same question!!! "Who is" is the same sentence structure in English ,yet, "who is", is placed at opposite ends of the sentence in the Chinese sentence structure.
In chinese you have to specify how many people no matter if it's just one person
I wish this would let you click on the characters so you could learn from it.
那是谁 means "Who is that?"
While it's correct, it's not a translation of "Who is this person?"
Do we really need a measure here? Is Na4 shi4 shei2 not sufficient already?
"Who is your dad?" and "who is this person?", seem like the same sentence structure, yet in Chinese they are not structured the same. "Who" is at oppisite ends of the sentence.
what is the diff. between na ge ren and zhe ge ren? seems the same to me, sorry if dumb question...
Not a dumb question at all! na(那) means "that" while zhe(这) means "this". So 那个人 means "that person (over there)" and 这个人 means "this person (over here)". I hope that helps!
Can anyone tell....in the beginning they said who's pinyin is "shéi"...now my answer was wrong and the pinyin says "shùi"....can anyone tell which pinyin is correct
well, If I am not given the pinyin of the first hanzi, I will never be able to write it down, next time.
- 845
Nope.
In Chinese, the position of the question word, like 谁, 什么 is supposed to be replaced in the answer. When used with verb "be", it is generally put after "be".
(Note: This indicates that Chinese can have multiple question words in one sentence. You just need to fill more holes in your answer.)
这个人是谁？(This man is who?) or 谁是这个人？(Who is this man?) are both valid. But the latter is a bit weird.
After replacement, it would be like:
这个人是我。(This man is me.) or 我是这个人。(I am this man.)
If you want to say "Who is he?", it would be 他是谁？(He is who?)
Why is 谁是你的爸爸？ among the tests to be translated to English? That means there are instances where the question word 谁 is placed at the start?
Then why does duo count the latter form wrong some times, and other times act like it's the only way.
- 1080
No, just like in English Chinese has its own grammar rules and that is not grammatically correct.
There must be some bug, because I wrote 这个人是谁? which is the given correct answer, and it marked it incorrect! Or was the problem that I had a question mark?
It can't detect punctuation, so it's possible you had a typo or that there is something messed up with it.
- 103
In this case, it's an optional measure word that makes the individuality of the person clearer. I don't know if there's any counterpart of this in English, so I'm going to use another measure word, 本 (book), to illustrate how adding a measure word gives a different sense from that without a measure word:
-
這笔记: this note
-
這本笔记: this book of note
-
這人: this person
-
這个人: this person (with 个 adding the sense of individuality)
Does anybody know if "谁是这个人" would be acceptable in real life? Duolingo marked it as wrong.
I don't know why. Who is this person is different with who is that person
Wait why dont you need "吗" at the end?? I thought that turns a statement into a question?
What's the main/most common sentence structure when asking questions in Mandarin?
- 1079
Lol. The exercise here is to translate "Who is this person?" into Chinese and simply I am always getting the wrong answer message by Duolingo. If answer zhe ge ren shi shei Duolingo says that right answer is na ge ren shi shei. But when answer na ge ren shi shei Duolingo says that the correct answer is zhe ge ren shi shei.
That's ridiculous! 2020/08/26
I typed 谁是这个人 and they marked it as wrong, they said the correct answer was 这个人是谁 please fix this, they mean the same thing
It accepted "这是谁" which I like to translate to "This is who?" But idk if thats actually ok
No, ”这个人是谁“ would mean "who is THIS person", and "那个人是谁“ means "who is THAT person".