"我爷爷和奶奶住在北京。"
Translation:My grandpa and grandma live in Beijing.
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And grandfather and grandmother: be sure to post your complaint at the flag. I think this side is just for us to see that there are other people complaining as well. This has not been fixed as of 12 25 2020.
Their new way of letting you correct your " mistakes" presented me with blank grandmother and grandfather which had been my answer and was counted wrong... What was I to do? They wouldn't accept my simply pushing the " I'm done"... Finally I put a dot in the middle of the space in frustration, pushed the complete , it was counted as corrected. Anybody else had this experience?
747
There is an important distinction to be made here. In Chinese, words for grandparents must indicate whether they are the grandparents on the mom's or dad's side. So:
爷爷 yéye = paternal grandfather (dad's father)
奶奶 nǎi nai = paternal grandmother (dad's mother)
外公 (or 公公) wài gōng = maternal grandfather (mom's father)
外婆 (or 婆婆) wài pó = maternal grandmother (mom's mother)
爷爷 and 奶奶 are just for paternal grandparents, right? Does anyone know what the words are for maternal grandparents?
Yes, 爷爷 and 奶奶 are for paternal grandparents. There are variations, but one set of names for maternal grandparents is 姥爷 and 姥姥.
The Chinese version has 我爷爷。。。But the translation other way around marks it as a mistake and requires 我的爷爷. please fix it.
I've noticed from all Duolingo's questions that masculine pronouns or nouns always come first. Is that generally a rule or is that simply how they wrote the questions?
- 1075
I believe it's a real rule. When my textbook taught us the word for sibling (兄弟姐妹), it said to always go in the order "male before female, then older before younger". Something about it being a holdover from a long time ago. That said, in English if you are just saying this, female-first seems to be the implied order (but not as strict a rule): "mom and dad", "grandma and grandpa", "aunt and uncle".
The revolution didn't try to change that part of the traditional culture, although they had the motto women hold up half the sky. Oh well tough luck ladies :-) :-(.
In Chinese you list the male first (爸爸妈妈, unlike in English where we usually say "Mom and Dad".)
I think that "My" is not necessary in English... Should it be accepted without "My"?
- 1075
If you're talking to other family members, you wouldn't need it, but you wouldn't need 我 in Chinese either. If you're talking to someone you don't know as closely, you should definitely use "my".
The tiles currently have “grandpa”, “grandma” and “grandfather”—I can see how this happened, since grandma/grandpa form a pair, but “grandpa” is not very acceptable to a lot of speakers. Buuuut the pair to “grandfather” is “grandmother”; those with “grandma” who reject “grandpa” probably have “granddad”. So IMO the tiles should provide the standard words “grandfather” and “grandmother”, and if they want to provide colloquial alternatives, “grandma” along with the two masculine variants “granddad” and “grandpa”. Also, as others have said, this lesson has failed us by not making the paternal/maternal distinction, for which (like elder/younger) we do have words in English.