"Diese Mädchen sind schön."

Translation: These girls are pretty.

[Adam121059]

I wrote "These girls are beautiful", but it was marked wrong. I thought schön meant pretty or beautiful?

[mizinamo]

"These girls are beautiful" is an accepted translation.

If it did not accept it for you, there may have been an error in Duolingo somewhere - a link to a screenshot would be helpful so that we can pass it on to developers.

[ali902046]

It did accept

[Arngrimur115]

how do you know if madchen means girl or girls

[mizinamo]

Look at the word before it and/or at the verb.

Dieses Mädchen ist schön. “This girl is pretty.”

Diese Mädchen sind schön. “These girls are pretty.”

[Arngrimur115]

thanks mate

[WilbertHar12]

Are "these and those" equally acceptable as translations of german "dies"?

[quis_lib_duo]

In everyday speech, yes, although people sometimes add hier and dort / da to denote whether an object is close-by or further away (e.g. diese Blume hier, das Auto dort, die Häuser da). In written German, you may encounter jene/r/s / jene for that / those.

[mizinamo]

As a rule of thumb, I'd recommend using dies only for "this, these" (near things) -- and using only das for the neutral "this/that, these/those" (near or far).

[reannarosenvall]

I might be nit-picking, but can you explain what you mean by "using only DAS for the NEUTRAL 'this/that, these/those' (near or far)." Does that imply gender somewhere else, within the context of this conversation?

[-Copernicus-]

He means "neutral" as a contrast to being specific about distance, not the neuter gender. "Dies" more or less specifies nearness, whereas "das" is neutral about that.

[reannarosenvall]

Thanks. It is finally starting to click (after six years of on and off study)!

[Kit845299]

Most of the time, yes.

Technically, these = diese und those = jene. But jene is not very common any more and sounds archaic, so most of the time you don't really differenciate between "these" and "those" in German.

[PatoSantis]

schön is also nice...

[Jeffrey327937]

Schon is pretty or beautiful.

[mizinamo]

Schon is pretty or beautiful.

No. schon means "already".

[9XYOO141]

The girls are beautiful was rejected. I'm notable to attach the screenshot of the issue.

[mizinamo]

The girls are beautiful was rejected

Indeed.

diese Mädchen means "these girls" and not "the girls".

[Meeeee37]

I also wrote beautiful instead of pretty and got it wrong

[mizinamo]

got it wrong

Then you probably made a mistake.

If you have a screenshot where we can see the exercise you had, the answer you gave, and Duolingo's reaction, then please share it with us -- upload it to a website somewhere (e.g. imgur) and tell us the URL of the image.

Or at the very least, quote your entire answer. Not just one word. Often, the mistake lies somewhere else.