"Taoba valā ēdrusi."

Translation:The boy and the man are sleeping.

December 24, 2017

5 Comments
This discussion is locked.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/BrunoSenra

Actually, this should not say "asleep" as a possible answer. "Ēdrugon" is a verb, not an adjective, so it should only be "sleep/are sleeping".


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Dedalvs

What does that matter? English is a different language. You don't have to match the word class of one language to the language you're translating from. If that were so, it would be literally impossible to translate any language with stative verbs into English.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/BrunoSenra

Fully agreed, and yet I maintain that using an adjective only makes it more confusing for new learners (especially non-native English speakers). If/when an adjective version of that word comes along, it'll mess with the head of most attentive people. We're not merely translating here (if this were literature or a line in GoT, I'd be all for "good sounding translation"), we're teaching a new language. When tackling stative verb languages, we need to explain how they operate and how that different logic affects the language, not ignore their existence and give the equivalent in English. At the same time learners need not (and shouldn't) limit their sentence buillding and structure skills, they also need to have some sort of idea of what is being literally said (especially in the beginning, when things haven't been internalized yet) and how the language operates, independently from English. This pushes students to guessing, trial and error, and inference learning, which is a double edged sword main aspect of Duo (practical and encompassing a lot of subjects but remaining shallow in most). I had to constantly double check SO many things on the Dothraki wiki while learning HV, that it become both challenging (in a good way) and tiring. Being a polyglot and a teacher, I kept wondering how much more demanding it'd be of people with harder time picking up new languages. I'd say that's an indication the course could do with a few tune-ups (anything related to teaching ideally should be constantly improved/updated, no?). Kirimvose for the contribution.


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/Waldo749583

Can be are sleeping too, but only take as a god answer "asleep"


https://www.duolingo.com/profile/OnTopForever

This is easy for me, it is like some brazilian expressions

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