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- Topic: German >
- "Wir haben viele Flugzeuge."
67 Comments
"Aircraft " should be perfectly acceptable, in fact preferable to "airplanes" or "aeroplanes", one of which is felt to be too lightweight for adult use on the east side of the Atlantic.
I'm not a native English (or German) speaker, but this is how I understand:
Aircraft is the general term for "flying machines". It can be anything from air balloon to helicopter or airplane. Airplane is a fixed-wing, power-driven aircraft.
aircraft - das Luftfahrzeug (die Luft - air, das Fahrzeug - vehicle, craft) airplane - das Flugzeug
That's how I'd understand it too. I suppose another course contributor has seen it differently, however, as "aircraft" is now accepted. I would still caution against learning it that way.
I am concurring with this user and others; "Airplanes" sounds childish and wrong to a UK English speaker. "Aircraft" or "Planes" should be acceptable answers.
In the U.S., I don't think it sounds wrong to say "planes" or "airplanes". "Aircraft", however sounds awkward. I makes me think of an amusement park employee saying 'Keep your hands and feet inside the aircraft'
After 50 years as an aircraft engineer I find the word "Aircraft" perfectly acceptable. I can remember a film called, One of our aircaft is missing.
Then you'd be horrified to hear someone call a helicopter an airplane, then?
As mentioned in several other comments:
Flugzeug = "(fixed-wing) airplane/aeroplane"
Luftfahrzeug = "aircraft"
All your planes may well be aircraft, but not all aircraft are Flugzeuge.
"we have many aircraft" is also a correct english translation, however it is not seen as an acceptable alternative by the app. Can someone please look into this? (aircraft is used as plural in this case)
When a translation you think is correct is not accepted, you should use the ‘report’ button to bring it to the attention of the staff. If you have doubts, you can first ask in the comments whether the translation is indeed correct; but if you're sure of your translation, commenting isn't going to be very useful.
Aircraft should be acceptable. Would that mean airplanes and helicopters? What would germans call the VTOL aircraft like the V-22 Osprey?
"Aircraft" generally are Luftfahrzeuge, a category that also includes helicopters, etc. (which are not Flugzeuge). The V-22 is a Wandelflugzeug. You can explore the German Wikipedia pages to see which terms are in use.
But in English, we use the exact same word for Luftfahrzeuge and flugzeuge - aircraft. An airplane is an aircraft, as is a helicopter or an airship or a hot air balloon or an autogyro, or even a model aircraft. It's an aircraft no matter whether it carries passengers or not. If it flies and it's human-made, it's an aircraft - and it applies whether it's singular or plural. So aircraft has to be a correct translation.
But that is not what ‘Flugzeug’ means. A hot air balloon is not a ‘Flugzeug’, neither is a zeppelin, nor (in spite of what Duden seems to be saying) is a helicopter a ‘Flugzeug’ in most German speakers' minds (in fact the German Wikipedia seems to be pretty clear that Flugzeuge are fixed-wing aircraft).
In English, there's a word we can use to describe cats, dogs, lions and monkeys, but if someone asked you to translate ‘Katze’, ‘Hund’, ‘Löwe’ or ‘Affe’, ‘animal’ would not be the best word.
‘Aircraft’ is ‘Luftfahrzeug’; ‘plane’ is ‘Flugzeug’.
"flythings" (or something like "flyequipment") would be the literal translation of the individual parts of "Flugzeuge", but obviously, that's not accepted since it's not an English word. There often isn't much point in translating each part of a compound word separately, other than to maybe deduce its meaning or to admire the logic with which German words are constructed, but either way you'll end up needing to translate the word as a whole to actually find the English equivalent.
In another question, "car" was rejected as a translation for "Fahrzeug" because it was too specific. Here "planes" and "airplanes" are accepted. Is "plane" not a bit too specific? Helicopters are never called planes. Nor are lighter-than-air craft. Are there other words for these in German? Am I being too pedantic in thinking that Duo shouldn't accept "planes"?
There is an important difference to be made: there is no specific term for plane in German other than ‘Flugzeug’, which does technically mean ‘aircraft’ (and this should definitely be an accepted translation) but is commonly used to refer to planes specifically. In fact, means of aerial transport more in general can be termed ‘Luftfahrzeuge’, which would never be understood as a plane specifically.
‘Fahrzeug’ and ‘Auto’ instead map pretty well to the English words ‘vehicle’ and ‘car’. Accepting ‘car’ as a translation for ‘Fahrzeug’ is, in my opinion, the same as accepting ‘dog’ for ‘Haustier’ (‘pet’) or ‘parakeet’ for ‘Papagei’ (‘parrot’). Yes, both are very prominent and common subsets of those classes, but why be specific when the original German sentence is clearly and purposefully general?
I wrote "we have lots planes" and it is wrong, why?
Because in English we say "lots of planes", not "lots planes".
How does one know when to use f or v for the f sound... Viele, Flugzeug
How does one know when to use f or v for the f sound... Viele, Flugzeug
Just memorisation, I'm afraid; I don't think there are any rules.
Sometimes you even have homophones, e.g. fiel "fell" / viel "much".
And the fact that "full - fill" in English is voll - füllen in German makes me think that the distinction might have been arbitrary at some point (with the letters being used interchangeably) but that the spelling crystallised at some point when spelling started to get standardised and now we end up with whatever happened to get standardised.
what about 'a lot', neither it is accepted
Yes it is. You can also write "We have a lot of airplanes".
‘Viel’ can only be used with singular nouns, in the plural it needs to be declined like any other adjective (NOM/ACC: viele, GEN: vieler, DAT: vielen).
Why is "a lot" not acceptable instead of "many". "Viele" could ve both right ?
What was your entire sentence?
Did you use the incorrect “a lot airplanes”, for example?
Because "plenty planes" is not correct standard written English.
"plenty of planes" would be grammatically correct but rather colloquial.
Use "many planes" or "lots of planes".
does "several" not work for viele?
Indeed it doesn't.
"several" (einige) is less than "many" (viele).
Oh well thanks for the reply. I'm not sure there is much of a difference between several and many in english but maybe germans are more precise.
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The definition for 'Several' in English is 'more than two'. It usually means less than many. Not everyone remembers this though.
I'm not a native speaking English, so I wonder why the word Airplanes is not correct and some said it sounds childish?
"We have many AIRPLANES" it says it's incorrect
It does? For a translation exercise? That would surprise me.
Show us, please -- upload your screenshot to a website somewhere (e.g. imgur) and tell us the URL of the image.
aeroplane is the same as airplane or plane so should be accepted, mine wasn't and I am suitably 'miffed'.
Please always quote your entire sentence when you have a question.
If Duolingo marked your sentence wrong, then it probably was wrong.
mine wasn't
Nobody can see what you wrote, so references to "my answer" or "the translation" or "this" are not helpful.
Take a screenshot, please, that shows the question and exercise type, your answer, and any error message there may be; then share it with us by uploading the screenshot to a website somewhere (e.g. imgur) and telling us the URL.
I wrote "We have no aeroplanes" which was marked incorrect. Duo's 'correct' answer was "we have no planes" or no airplanes. I believe airplanes is the American term. I believe the English term is aeroplane.
I wrote "We have no aeroplanes" which was marked incorrect.
Of course.
viele Flugzeuge means "many aeroplanes", not "no aeroplanes".
Duo's 'correct' answer was "we have no planes" or no airplanes.
Do you have a screenshot of Duolingo suggesting "no planes" or "no airplanes" as a correct translation for this sentence?
I can't see either of those incorrect versions in the back end.
I believe airplanes is the American term.
That's right. And Duolingo uses American English to teach German, so the default translations will always be AE.
BE variants are usually accepted as well if you type them in, as long as the remainder of the sentence is correct.
I wrote "we have several planes" and it marked it wrong. Why do I need to use "many" instead? Is there a significant grammatical difference?
I wrote "we have several planes" and it marked it wrong. Why do I need to use "many" instead? Is there a significant grammatical difference?
Not a grammatical difference (they are used identically from the point of view of grammar), but a semantic difference (they have different meanings).
"several" is less than "many".
Really? Duolingo is that pedantic?
Several should be accepted. I mean, clearly Cody knows the meaning of the phrase, yet Duolingo is penalizing him for not being able to recall the precise English translation for the very imprecise word "viele"? Give us a break!
I mean, clearly Cody knows the meaning of the phrase
Eh? It seems to me that he doesn't if he thinks that viele is merely "several".
I have just been informed that 'aircraft' has now been accepted by Duolingo.
I am a native (American) English speaker, and "several (air)planes" is often preferable in English to "many (air)planes." However, when I write "several" it registers as an incorrect answer.
"several" and "many" mean different things.
If you have several planes but not very many, then "several" will be preferable as it's more accurate.
But if you have lots and lots of planes, then "several" will not be accurate nor preferable.
Here, Duo has viele Flugzeuge (many planes) and not just einige Flugzeuge (several planes).
Thanks mizinamo (rewriting this since it didn't appear to register the first time). I did think about it for a second and yes, you're correct. It just sounded inelegant to my ears to say "many" when referring to a quantity of planes. Colloquially in English I probably would use "a lot of." So my use of "several " was more an aesthetic choice, but I guess incorrect, nonetheless. I noticed this query has come up in the past. Thanks for your patience and follow-through
Colloquially in English I probably would use "a lot of."
That would be fine.
Unfortunately, "aircraft" is one of those words that many non-English speakers don't understand. For some reason, many people don't understand that it can be both singular and plural. It should be a perfectly acceptable answer, yet it isn't, and hasn't been for at least four months. Come on Duolingo moderators - surely it can't take this long to fix what is obviously an error.
