"他是老师。"
Translation:He is a teacher.
33 Comments
Since this is a "Type what you hear" exercise - and the audio plays "tā shì lǎoshī" - shouldn't 她是老师 be accepted as a correct answer as well? And how can we differentiate between he and she when we're speaking?
This literally translates to he is teacher. If the translation is: he is A teacher, then the Chinese should be 他是一个老师，because as it is, 他是老师 means he is teacher, so I was correct
To make a complete sentence in English, you need the article "a," so no, can't be correct. Translation between languages does not work in a word-by-word or type-by-type manner, because languages have different characteristics and it is not possible most of the times to translate exactly the same meaning. The baseline is, the translated text has to be gramatically correct.
If you hear the sentence 他是老师 out of context, there's no way you can tell if the teacher is male or female cause it's pretty much the same word and tone (tā). On the other hand, when you read the characters, the pronoun changes from 他 (he) to 她 (she)... but it's not really gender related cause 它 (it) is also the same word and tone "tā".
I'm new to mandarin, but i believe that 他 is the male form and 她 is the female form, yet they both sound the same.
202
Can someone explain: Do you need both lao and shi to mean teacher? Does either one of those mean anything on its own or do they only work as a word when they are together? Thanks
I don't really know, but I just tried to translate them individually on this site http://www.systranet.com/translate/ and 老 translated as "old" and 师 was translated as "teachers", and 老师 was translated as "teacher". So the characters do mean something on their own, but I think it would be best to use both to mean "teacher" if that is what Duo is teaching.
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thank you, I so appreciate your responding. Its hard to learn the Chinese when no meanings are attached and I seem to need the meaning for my brain to remember any of it. Not sure why duo is not including any meanings. So thank you very much.
Duolingo is good to exercise. But if you really want to learn chinese, try to find also some good other sources (youtube for example). I also speak with natives (by conversationexchange), so I can get real feedbacks.
Its more of a compound word. lao means experienced old aged other words like "lao ren" means elderly aka old person. Shi means teacher or specialist, and has some military connotation by itself. The two characters together specifies an educational teacher.
Please help me! When '他' means (she) and when (he). For example I couldn't know from a sentence which one is right. Or is the symbol different?
I found it. Yeah the symbol is different... I'm sorry for stupid question, my bad.
The easiest way to remember is the first vase like charcter 女 in 她 Means female. Many basic characters are derived from pictures so the woman character looks like a stick figure woman .
In chinese, at least how I learned, you have to specify that she is one teacher, not just that she is teacher. I’m not sure if you can leave the specification out tho
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In the example at the of this discussion, the character is the male form of the sound "ta". So you need to use "He is a teacher" If your exercise was only hearing (and no characters) then either he or she would be correct.
她是老师 should also be accepted since they sound identical, but there's no option under "report" for this
For anyone coming here confused about he/she/it, they're all the same in Mandarin, no way to tell, and it's not the only language like that, Persian(Farsi) has that too, او means both he/she, (though "it" has it's own word) Idk any other language that does that, but I'm willing to bet those aren't the only two, and yes, even native speakers don't know if "ta" is a female or male, (not a native speakers, but same situation in Farsi)
Pay attention to the characters :
他 = he
她 = she
它 = it
All are pronounced the same way.
It is the same, 一个 can be omitted because it is implicit and clear. On the other hand, in English it is required to have the article "a."
I chose she is a teacher. In other instances of 他是, my answer would be correct.
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Unless I'm missing something, the first character is now understood to be masculine as its left half is the character for "man". Even though Mandarin may not have had gender in the past, at present, the first character would need to have the left half be the character for "woman" in order to translate as "she".
can u pls dont correct my english its disgusting course you guys have basically no clue and i dont want to make my owl a cry face just becourse you have no clue if u correct right sentences stop that u do that in loop and write literally the same thing as i did
