"我们要刀和叉。"
Translation:We want knives and forks.
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Of course, and as usual, the acceptable English answers are zilch. What is wrong with: "We all want a knife and fork". It won't accept it though.
Yao 要 can mean anything from want, to need, or have to have something. And 我们 can mean we, we all, or we both. The rules change all the time in this course. Drives you nuts, other courses like the French course are very slick and good products but the Chinese never seems to get any upgrades or work done on it.
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It doesn't need to be plural. Although in most contexts that you'd use this sentence it probably would be. Regardless, duolingo wouldn't accept the exact sentence you wrote anyway since English needs articles, i.e. "We need a knife and a fork". I don't know if that's accepted because I haven't tried it, but it should.
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And why does it have to be need instead of want? According to the hover hint and what we have learned 要 can be want too.
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I heard the 刀 as, well, definitely not the first tone. Or at least it sounds as a lower tone than the following 叉.
The voice does sound like that of a native speaker, though, so I don't expect the fault to be with the speaking part.
Is there a trick to learn here?
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In the listening exercise ("Tap what you hear") I even hear the male voice say: yōu náo!
It is remarkable that the pronunciation is sometimes very bad ...!
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Here are "want" and need both acceptable, but next one sentence only "need" is acceptable, and last one sentence only "want" is acceptable. Why it's so non-stable in translation?