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- "我们的孩子喜欢看英语书。"
"我们的孩子喜欢看英语书。"
Translation:Our child likes to read English books.
46 Comments
Its sad to be a non native English speaker because I make stupid mistake like this one (I wrote "likes read").
What is the general way of making know the difference between my child/my children?
我的孩子 is acceptable for both, but if you say something like "我的孩子们", the 们 is implying the plural. Hope that helps!
1169
I'm very new to Mandarin, but would "我的都孩子" (wǒ de dōu háizi) work for "My children" ?
The 都，should probably come after 孩子。however, i think the best way to say my children would be 我的孩子们（都 if all)喜欢看英语书。
I'm guessing if it's 'children' then ＇都＇would be used? 我们都孩子 (??). Wild guess though
At first I automatically thought of translating it with 'children', but then I realised that China had a one-child policy. So in Chinese the most common meaning has to be 'child' (singular).
Not necessarily. You can't arrive at that conclusion until you know who is speaking. A group of parents talking at school might say "Our children....".
We cannot jump to a conclusion that one-child policy forces you to translate the sentence with 'child' in all contexts.
That's what I think at least. Happy to hear others' thoughts.
- 19
"Had" is the right word. It hasn't been in place since 2015. Besides, Chinese is also the/an official language in Taiwan and Singapore, and is spoken by people in lots of other places.
our kid loves to read English books or Our child likes to read English books
I think it is "likes", or at least this is the translation my chinese teacher thaught me
You use "。" for a period, so as Tips in duolingo. In Tips, they use "？" for a question mark. Are both "。" and "？" mandatory in Chinese?
- 199
those are just the punctuation marks associated to the chinese keybard。。。you can use normal points andinterrogation signs
I am a Japanese. We use the same symbol "。" for a period and also for a question mark. Some use the symbol "？" for a question mark, but mainly in a horizontal presentation. It is a part of influences from English. The original presentation both for Japanese and Chinese are vertical. Duolingo could not handle the vertical presentation. Anyway, I will check the situation with a Chinese book, magazine, or newspaper, later in a library.
'Enjoy' is one of the possibilities so I believe it should be accepted as correct.
- 355
Is there a reason why "English language books" isn't accepted? Since the characters refer to the English language an not to the country England, it is actually the better translation.
"English language books" conveys the meaning that the books teach English language. Similar to the notion of English grammar books which teach English grammar.
And by the way, I don't see English books as books from the country England. You can read signs written in English even in Japan. (note, we don't need to say signs written in the English language..)
That's what I think. Do you agree?
In other section 孩子 was plural and singular was not accepted, here it's singular that's not accepted !!!
Should the book be plural? Because i was rejected for writing "book", instead of "books"
I put "Our child likes reading English books" and it said that it was wrong. As a native English speaker I feel like either translation should be accepted since they mean the same thing.
I answered by assuming 孩子 was plural and it marked it as wrong. Is there any way to distinguish between singular and plural in that case?
It is best to read the previous posts before posting your own as your query will often have been answered already, so you will get your answer immediately. See the post by PianistKevin. According to him your answer should have been acceptable.
The problem here is not plural ot singular. Duolingo is not accepting kid or kids for child or children. I tried both kid and kids. Children was marked as correct.
Is there a way to understand only from the chinese sentence in this case, whether the books were written by an english author and translated or the reader actually reads them in English
You can use 们. 都 means ''all'', so it'd mean ''all children'', but what if you have e.g. 3 children, two of them likes to read and that one doesn't? You should make a difference.
- 19
"Like" and "is" aren't modal verbs; can you explain a bit further what your question is? Also, what do you mean by "behave?" Chinese verbs don't conjugate of course. I'm not trying to come off as snide or anything. I just don't quite understand what you're asking.
English language books infers that the books are about the English language. English books infers the books are written in English.
As a non native English speaker I am usually doing some small mistakes here and there, could someone tell me if what I wrote here is wrong : "Our child likes reading English books".
And if it is wrong indeed, what would be the english grammar rool? If it is not too much for asking
- 457
Our child likes reading English books.
That sentence is perfectly correct: the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style are all good, and the sentence would sound "natural" to English speakers throughout the world (e.g., in Australia, Canada, England, The United States of America, and so forth).
There is only one, very minor point regarding punctuation that really has nothing to do with your sentence, except for how the sentence appears on the monitor: you wrote
"Our child likes reading English books".
just like that, with the period (.) after the quotation mark ("); instead, the preferred standard is to put the period before the quotation mark, this way:
"Our child likes reading English books."
Again, that is a very minor detail that many native speakers probably would not even notice, and everything else about your sentence is fine.
For comparison, here is your sentence (again), with two other sentences that mean basically the same thing as yours; all 3 of these sentences are correct English, with no mistakes in grammar, punctuation, spelling, or style; your suggestion is the first in this list:
Our child likes reading English books.
Our child likes to read English books.
Our child enjoys reading English books.
@Piotery - thanks for the update. I will now modify my previously learnt English sentences to "Kid is the father of man", "Nadia Comeneci was a kid prodigy", "Jesus was a kid of God", "I am just childing" etc etc. I am forever indebted to your valuable teachings here.
