"他是老师。"
Translation:He is a teacher.
90 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
In the "type what you hear" section, allowing both 她/他 makes sense.
My options were 他 and 她们. This shows me that they want you to think about your answer.
If one is typing versus using the bubble selection and the gender is unknown, defaulting with 他/他们 is what one should do if the gender is not specified.
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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".
541
In the example at the top 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.
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)
Finnish is among them... 'hän' is used for both 'he' and 'she' while 'se' is 'it'. It's among the languages without a grammatical gender (that is, nouns don't have an implied gender). The Finno-Ugric family (including Hungarian) and Basque are different language families from other European languages -- all others being Indo-European.
541
Yes that is true of the sound, the verbal ta. However the sight, the character that you write on a page can be written as either he or she depending on the first part of the character being man or woman.
1137
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.
541
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.
541
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.
541
Yes, it didn't used to be but it is now. He starts with the character for man, she starts with the character for woman. Read the comment above.
1137
There is no direct word for "the" in Chinese. In general if the word is the subject of a sentence, you translate with "the [noun]" but if it is placed at other places in the sentence, it is indefinite and you translate with "a/an [noun]" or plural form. If you need "the" in case the noun is not a subject, you normally need a definite modifier 他是这个老师。"He is the/this teacher."
541
There is not a difference in the SOUND but there is quite a difference in the CHARACTER. See Keith's post.
1137
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."
541
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".
541
She is made with the radical for woman on the left; he is made with the radical for man on the left. You can see the "he" character at the top of this discussion. You can see the "she" character just above your question in richard.fern57's comment.
226
By default, 他 is gender-neutral, although the probability it's "he" is usually higher. Please check my post to learn more about 3rd-person singular pronouns in modern Chinese: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/25690890?comment_id=37429005
541
The sound "ta" is both he and she. The character that you see is very different. IF you are saying "he" then the first character means "man"; likewise for "she" the first part of the character means "woman". So you can only distinguish it by sight, not by sound.
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If 他 is used, one can't know whether it's "he" or "she" without additional info. 她 is always "she," though.
1137
I think it is a common practice in Taiwan that 他 can refer to any gender. In Hong Kong for example, it is stricter that 他 is almost always referring to a male person.
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There are indeed regional usage differences. I often like to mention 他's "she" usage as it's pretty useful for writing a novel with a character whose gender hasn't been revealed :)
1137
No, you cannot leave out the article in English because the grammar would be incorrect.