"你们不是中国人。"
Translation:You are not Chinese.
51 Comments
I wrote "You are not all Chinese" it said "You all are not Chinese". That's not how I'd say it.
It has 2 slightly diferent meanings and the way you say it, it could mean that you're skeptical about them being chinese indtead of teling them
They showed me "All of you aren't Chinese." as a correct answer and I don't see 都 in this sentence => 你们不是中国人。 .
I got marked wrong for "None of you are Chinese" and it said I should have put "Both of you aren't Chinese" instead, which just seems like a much more awkward way to say it. Also that seems kind of wrong since 你们 doesn't specify two people, just more than one, right? Am I wrong or did I just get tripped up on a technicality (like maybe the system is specifically looking for the word "not"?).
This is not the correct English is it? 你们不是中国人 "You" as in singular or plural is the same. "You guys" is not correct, sounds like "you boys" while ladies can be ment or a mixed group.
They just want to be sure that you understand was it plural or singular "you" in this Chinese phrase. So just show it and use "you guys" if it's plural. You are studying Chinese and not teaching English here...
I am not teaching English, but "you guys" is not English. Been in England many times but never heard "you guys" but "you all".
Alex, I agree with you. But we are just studying Chinese and for "you all" we have the other expression 你们都. So we have to use different English words to separate you (singular), you (plural) and you all but just for the time while we are learning. Later in life when we become good interpreters from Chinese we translate 你们 without any "guys" or "chaps", "punks" etc ;)
I've just found a good comment about "you guys" issue. MishaLavrov wrote: "The Chinese is not being idiomatic, the English is. I agree that it's not perfect, but it's more important to be able to indicate when "you" is supposed to be plural (otherwise we would never write 你们 when translating to Chinese). There's no good way to do that."
"You guys" is used fairly often in parts of the United States. "You all" is used in the southern US while "you guys" tends to be used in the midatlantic, northeast, midwest and west. It is gender neutral and can be used to refer to all men, all women, or men and women together.
in English in the UK, we would use the term you guys to mean a group of males and females , although usually it would be a group of teenagers in the context "What are you guys up to" if joining a group and you wish to find out how to fit in conversationally.
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In my part of the US (northern Michigan), we say you guys or youse guys. Not grammaticslly correct but that's us.
It's okay in English. But we are learning the plural form of 'you' in Chinese. Perhaps 'all' could be put into parentheses to avoid the confusion :-)
I wish duolingo had decided to use you* or some such character to represent you (plural) would have made life easier all around. I do notice that further on in the course they allow answers with just you for you plural, so you guys is just a learning tool to remind us if we are translating in to Chinese and talking/referring to a group we must ni men 你们 and to one person just ni 你。
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Some ramarks: 1. Yesterday I was the whole day not at home, so I was not be able to learn Chinese. 2. By most of the characters I miss the English translation Wim Dispa
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I have had some difficulties with writing into the right sequence. For example: in English language (and also in Dutch language) we write: "What is teacher Li's telephone number?" In Chinese language we must write: "Teacher LI's telephone number is what?" That is a little bit more complicated for me.
Horrible English, as a native English speaker no one says "You all are not chinese"
Why is 'You are not all Chinese' accepted? I'd consider this to be the more natural way of saying it, and I am a native English speaker. Could someone elaborate?
Actually as a hongkonger(I have to clarify because some words from Cantonese is different from Mandarin) I think the word 'all' is not necessarily need to include in the answer. If the question is 你们都/全部不是中国人, the answer need to include all into it sorry for my bad English
Translated it to: "Aren't you guys Chinese"? Because 们 is supposed to mean plural. I'm deeply confused rn, scrolled over 们 and it said that duolingo allows you to translate it as "you guys", so I don't know why this didn't work. Maybe this course should be put into a stage 1/3 incubator, where people can do it normally but contributors are allowed. This is the definition of insanity to me, especially if someone is about to get mastery on a skill and this question causes them to fail the mastery test.
Surely they should accept "you are not all Chinese" as an acknowledgement that I understood it was plural "you". There's no other way of clearly defining this in English, other than using "guys" etc that as mentioned in other discussion contributions, is informal or misleading. My other instinct was to put "You (plural).." which I'm sure wouldn't have been marked correct.
I see in the following question both "are you Chinese" and "are you all.." is accepted. They may have accepted "both" as well. I've just clicked off it so can't recall.
In English, the word you is ambiguous as to number. It is not necessary to disambiguate this, such as with "you guys". Moreover, "you guys" is more colloquial, not really part of polite conversation, and regrettable in writing.
"you guys" is really starting to bother me the more I see it, not because it's incorrect, but because it's weirdly informal in this context. "Y'all" is a much better translation.
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你们 "ni men" is "you (pl.)" - "you all, you guys", but isn't "they". 不是 "bu shi" is "aren't", but isn't "are".
No because... you is second person, they is third person. English doesn't separate second person in singular from plural, in spanish singular is "tú" and plural is "ustedes" for example. And in chinese it is 你 (singular second person) and 你们 (plural second person). Different from 他们 (masculine plural third person) or 她们 (femenine plural third person)
