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- "They are my older brother an…
"They are my older brother and older sister."
Translation:他们是我的哥哥和姐姐。
28 Comments
1028
Yes. We use 她們 only in the case all of them are female.
BTW There is a less learned character 妳, being the female version of 你. We can see it often in Traditional Chinese ladies' media. 妳 and 妳們 are also used in the same way.
Chinese feminists to the front. Start writing 她们 as soon as there is one female among them. Gender reversal.
i seem to have the identical phrasing but it was not accepted 他们 是我的哥哥和姐姐
It is conventional in Chinese to omit the possessive particle when talking about close relatives.
I think the point of Duolingo is to gain a more literal understanding of a language. Its hard to convey/teach subtle colloquiallisms like that.
One of the Chinese sentences is this lesson is formed without the possessive. It doesn't make sense to not accept it as an answer.
Why is it okay to leave out 我的 before your family member in the other sentence but here it's marked wrong? When should we leave it out?
很谢谢你! (I totally made very thank you up! Let me know if that's incorrect too. ;) )
While 我的 is overkill here, I think it best to put 我 to stress you are talking about your family members. This seems to be in line with normal practice where the 的 is dropped when talking about your own family.
TLDR: The sentence 他们是我哥哥姐姐 is accepted.
- 1028
Which is the other sentence?
We normally can omit 我的 when "my" can be reasonably implied. If you omit 我的 in this sentence, i.e. 他们是哥哥和姐姐, we have no clue whose brother and sister they are.
Having said that, some similar sentences will be acceptable, but not related to possessive.
他们是哥哥和妹妹
they are (elder) brother and (younger) sister
他们是姊姊和弟弟
they are (younger) brother and (elder) sister
Note that these sentences would not make sense if you have 哥哥和姊姊, or 弟弟和妹妹.
Depends on the context I suppose. I was asked to translate from English to Chinese - in which case that translation would be inaccurate.
I was asked to translate "older brother and older sister", so translating them to an ambiguous "brother and sister" would be an inaccurate translation. In a different context that specificity might not be needed, so you could relax the translation and use what you wrote.
Because then you would be saying “Mine they are older brother and sister”.
Structurally: The subject is “they” The verb is “are” The object is “My older brother and sister”.
You can rearrange the sister with the brother but nothing else.
- 1028
In Chinese for some reason or another words do follow a particular order of appearance. It would not sound natural if you say sister before brother, or younger brother before elder brother, or mother before father.
Duolingo expects translated sentences to be in word order instead of meaning.
