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- "I want to go to places like …
"I want to go to places like France and Germany for the summer vacation."
Translation:夏休みはフランスに行ったりドイツに行ったりしたいです。
48 Comments
1476
You can take a laundry list of verbs, conjugate them in plain past form (~った) and add a り, and it just means "among doing this, and this, and this..." Kind of like using や and などwith nouns (which Duolingo does not have a lesson on.)
If you take a bunch of verbs and string them together with their ~て forms, it implies either a time passing ("I did this and then this.") or a causation (like "because.") When you use ~たり, it's just a bunch of stuff in no particular order.
Thank you for explaining ~たり.
I am not surprised you missed that や was used, as it only occurred in one single sentence as far as I know in all the tree, very easy to never see or forget about.
"Shopping 2" has one lesson that features や
"子どもはあめやおかしがすきです。" Translation:Children like candies and treats.
Hopefully Tree 2.0 will have more や and introduce など, and hopefully I'll be enrolled into it in the next few months.
1476
Ah! I remember now. Thank you for reminding me. I'm hoping as well that when they update the tree it will have more examples. I also hope for Duolingo Stories in Japanese! My students are looking forward to those.
1003
Not how it's used in this sentence, because using 行ったり twice sounds like something a kid would say.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/32709526?comment_id=32709527
923
The meaning stays the same, of course, but I suppose Duolingo wants to make sure you know which is which, so you don't accidentally think フランス is Germany, for example.
1476
The ending of the verbs implies there are a lot of things going on. Take any verb, put it in ~た form. This is "plain past tense." (Okay, so here is the first problem if you are using ONLY Duolingo to learn. They do not as yet have a lesson on "plain past tense." In a nutshell, it is the same as ~て-form (Just like when you change a verb to give a command or say "please."), except that instead of ~て we are going to use ~た. The good news is that Japanese is very logical and there are only two irregular verbs in the whole language (する・くる) and even they act normally once you get past their initial weirdness.) So once you get ~た form down, all the verbs will act the same.
Then you just add り so you get~たり. This particular verb ending implies a list of stuff you are doing.
I'll give you some help with ~た form. Remember, it also works for ~て form. Step 1: You have to know the dictionary form (AKA plain form, AKA じしょかたち) for the verb in question. If the verb ends with つ or う or is a five-step る-verb, take off the つ or る , and it's going to become った。 (examples: たつー>たった・ うたうー>うたった・ のぼるー>のぼった) If the verb ends with く, the new ending will be いた。 (example: かくー>かいた) If the verb ends with す, it will become した。 (はなすー>はなした) If the verb ends in ぶ, む, or ぬ, it will change to んだ。 (あそぶー>あそんだ・ よむー>よんだ・ しぬー>しんだ) If the verb is a one-step る-verb (hint: These generally have an えor い sound right before the る), just take it off and add た。 (たべるー>たべた) The two irregular verbs: するー>した くるー>きた
Hope this helps! Remember that ~て form works the same way, so you get two for the price of one!
1400
Exactly! ^^;
there are only two irregular verbs in the whole language (する・くる)
and
If the verb ends with く, the new ending will be いた。 (example: かくー>かいた)
Given the specific sentence we're discussing and the verbs it contains, this seems to have been rather a big oversight... 行く (いく) having 行った (いった) as its past tense clearly goes against these two blunt assertions. XD
1476
Thank you for chiming in, Testmoogle!
Yes, I suppose you could say "There are 2 1/2 irregular verbs in Japanese!"
Because Japan has historically been so literate, you can see some evolution of 「 いく」 in the written language. But you are right; this one is weird only in the ~て and ~た forms, where you will get a little っ instead of the expected き。(If you care about geeky stuff, the き gradually changed into an い and then turned into the little っ. )
I see where you are coming from but actually duolingo has it right here. There is a certain pattern for たりする. It goes verb1たりverb2たりfinal verb たりする. So basically the ending verb is the only one conjugated to show tense and such while the rest of the verbs will always be in plain past form. Hope this helps a bit.
Is it common to use the 〜たり〜たり form with the same verb multiple times? I don't think I've seen it used that way before. The meaning of the Japanese sentence seems closer to "I want to do things like go to France and go to Germany during summer vacation." I tried to translate this exercise as 夏休みにフランスやドイツなどに行きたいです and Duo marked me wrong.
387
Actually DuoLingo "plays" here with grammar, DuoLingo does not realize that most people come here to learn how to speak currently and how to be understandable. Most of those sentences in these lessons of this level are not used as that in the everyday life of Japanese people.
1400
Not sure if maybe you meant to reply to a different comment?
All the person you replied to was asking, two years ago, is why writing 夏休み instead of "なつ休み" was rejected.
Two years ago, back when the course was still on its original tree, the Japanese for this sentence was written as follows:
なつ休みはフランスに行ったりドイツに行ったりしたいです。
If you typed 夏休み instead of なつ休み at that time (two years ago), apparently it didn't accept the answer.
One of the course contributors has since changed the text for the default translation to use 夏休み, so it obviously accepts this now. ^^
274
Is anyone else having problems with this exercise? I keep getting it wrong. I even copied it exactly and still got the wrong answer...
Because of the "places like...", one should use や instead of と, but, 夏休みはフランスやドイツなどのところに行きたいです (which I put in) was not marked as correct either. So I suppose one could think of it like "For summer vacation, I want to do such things as go to France and go to Germany." to emphasise the "a thing such as go/travel to"-part...
This lesson really REALLY needs a "tip" section that gives an explanation of what new things are introduced, and why it wants us to use したり and the details of how you construct a sentence with it...
1476
There are lots of other ways to formulate this sentence as well; for example using the particles や and など (which I have not seen yet in the entire Duolingo Beta tree. Maybe now that they've added crowns?)
654
Maybe there is an alternative way to formulate an answer while not using some of the words as shown in the translation above. If you can tell what exactly were given then we may be able to help ^^.