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On what grounds can "which house is opposite yours?" be wrong? Few people would say "opposite from yours"
2445
I'm a native English speaker. I have taught English communications in post-secondary and I assure you, "Which house is opposite yours?" is completely correct.
- 2445
In everyday speech, it would be fine, however, in writing, adding "to" would be considered incorrect (especially by picky teachers ☺).
Thank you, Madeline, for reassuring me. I am a non-native teacher of English and I started to think that my knowledge of British English grammar was poor.
Duolingo uses American English as the default and not British English, I'm a native British English speaker but am constantly being marked wrong for using British English - and constantly having to report. It is annoying!
- 956
Since I'm not a native english speaker I have a simmilar question: Why is "which house is opposite yours?" wrong?
How do you report it? Lost another heart on this one. I wrote: Which house is opposite yours? and DL displayed the following as the only correct translations: Which house is opposite of yours? and Which house is across from yours?
- 2445
In the bottom left-hand corner, just to the left of "Discuss sentence" is a button that says, "Report a Problem." Click that and choose the best option(s). ☺
- 315
I'm a native English speaker. An English person wouldn't ever say 'opposite of yours'. Your 'is opposite yours' was fine.
What MadelineRainey said - here's a link to the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary to confirm for you (with examples):
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/opposite%5b4%5d
This is the question that came to my mind immediately after I read that the translation that I gave "which house is opposite yours?" was incorrect.
I read this as 'which house is yours opposite?' So I am obviously missing some grammatical point here. Would be very pleased if somebody can explain.
Ok I need some help on this one. Why is "deinem gegenüber" not "yours opposite" but "... opposite yours"?
Well, the easy answer is because, when translating from German to English, "yours opposite" is not how it's said in English. As for a rule in German as to why the correct word order in German is "deinem gegeüber" and not "gegeüber deinem" I can't find a rule in my google searches to explain it but to me "gegenüber deinem" just sounds wrong. Maybe it's not all that wrong, I don't know. Clearly I am not providing expert response but maybe some response is better than none? I should probably shut up now.
yeah, I kind of had the same question: is it okay to say "welches Haus ist gegenüber deinem?"
Would "Which house is yours across from." be any different? Do you switch 'deinem' to 'dein'?
I've put: Which house is across yours (without from)... and got it wrong :(
Across and across from are different.
My child lies across my lap while I read him bedtime stories.
My child sits across from me, on the other side of the table.
Including "from" shows distance between the two items, "my child" and "me". Your sentence, "Which house is across yours," might be used in a post-hurricane description where a house has landed on top of your friend's house, crosswise (in which case, both would have been destroyed). :)
I understand 'across from' but it was not given as a hint. The hints were opposite and in comparison. "Which house is compared to yours". Also not correct. Are the hints incorrect?
What about "Which house is in front of yours?" Would that be not right in English?
- 2445
No, that doesn't work in English. Picture yourself in a queue. The person in front of you probably has his/her back to you (and is therefore not opposite).
It's similar when you describe something as being in front of your house; it can be facing any direction: a car stopped in front of your house is not likely facing your house (and therefore not opposite).
If a suspicious person is walking down the other side of the street stops to stare at your house, you could describe that person to the police as being opposite your house.
Being opposite a house implies facing it.
Thank you, Madeline. In Spanish it is different, then, that in English. I think it may be because in our language "front" is "Frente" and this word means also forehead. In Spanish, the person who is in the queue in front of me would not be described as "frente a mí", but "delante de mí" which means something like "before me". May the German course for Spanish speakers be released soon... though I am improving my English as well.
Not really. While it makes sense it changes the literal meaning of the sentence. The question is 'which house is opposite your house', not 'which house is your house opposite?'
The sense is the same, and the answer to either question would be the same, but they are not the same construction and they translate differently into German, French, Italian and Spanish. I guess in the end it boils down to a question of accuracy in translation.
Are you a native English speaker? It's exactly how I would ask the question, and I am a native English speaker.
I at first put "Which house is across from yours?" and changed it to "Which house is yours across from?". sigh
I think this is because verb modifiers go to the end of the sentence. (Will check and edit when I'm on my computer; currently on my phone.)
because that means opposite from where you're standing, rather than opposite from where your house is
deinem is possessive and in the context of this sentence implies your own house. so yeah it does talk about a location. if it was talking about it being opposite from you it would say dir gegenüber
"Which house is yours opposite?" or "Which house is yours across from?" whats wrong with that? :-/
I put 'which house is opposite from yours' and got it wrong. I'm not a native English speaker but I lived in the US for five years and if im not mistaken this should be correct. Or is everything I've learned a lie??
- 361
I wouldn't care to speculate on that last one, but I will say that "opposite from" sounds quite peculiar to me.
I put 'which house is opposite from yours' and got it wrong. I'm not a native English speaker but I lived in the US for five years and if im not mistaken this should be correct. Or is everything I've learned a lie??
Which house (dative-no article) is to your {house(dative: implied)}, across the street? or (To or from) Which house is your house (across, across from, opposite to, across the street)? Apparently in German the dative case for 'Haus' with no article gets connected to the pronoun 'dein', or more simply, the house across or opposite yours. We would want to write incorrectly(? not sure) in German: Welches Haus ist gegenüber deinem house? or Welches House gebenüber deinem House ist? only like English the verb doesn't always go to the end of the sentence. We tend to think of gegenüber as a kind-of direction of movement action (I had to look it up to see if it's a verb or a noun... it's a noun). Or at least that's how I see it. It is actually in English a gerund phrase like in Which house is across the street from yours? or "Which house is across from yours?" :-)
I actually write these posts as an inward look from which I learn the proper way to say it in German. As such, I hope it's helpful. As cases go, it's one of those exceptions by using the "em" ending instead of "en" for seinem instead of seinen Haus. I actually incorrectly translated to English as: "Which house across the street is yours?" of course... marked wrong.
