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- "La familia come a las doce t…
"La familia come a las doce todos los días."
Translation:The family eats at noon every day.
46 Comments
519
Yes, and DL should correct. ' "At 12" (a las doce) should not translate to "mediodia" or "medianoche.
I started to put "at noon" but didn't trust it. I put ''at twelve'' which is accepted.
Now that I think about it, at twelve would be twice a day. So unless the family gets together at midnight it would be noon.
La frase es ambigua. Es mejor usar mediodía o medianoche.
209
I think of family as 'they'. Here they are using family as 'it'. I think comen should be accepted.
No matter how many people are in one family, one family is singular. In American English, which Duolingo uses, and in Spanish, the singular verb is needed.
Since it is a collective noun, it is acceptable in British English to use a plural verb. So, if you want to argue for that as an acceptable translation, you can report it using the flag button. However, you cannot use the Spanish plural verb, because Spanish is not British English.
51
For the English conjugation I agree, and this is the common way I've heard it spoken in London, the south centre, Bristol, and Wales. "The family eat at noon", not "eats".
For Spanish, I don't know. But I'm sure than somewhere in the Castellani world, someone considers "the family" as a "they".
1175
What the hell is this doing in Basics 1: Practice? Yeh cos people who have just been taught apple and comer, know all of this right? What are they doing...
51
Sad to see so much downvoting of people questioning the conjugation of the verb for the family. Always so much downvoting of people who use their language differently to you. Rarely ever conversation discussing the differences of colloquialisms and dialects.
I grew up in the south of England and I can tell you that, all across the south, including London, Bristol, Southampton, Wales even, everyone who I spoke to at length would refer to a family as a singular entity, but pronouned with "they" - never "it". Thus, always the conjugation for an action by "the family" would be for "they". "The family eat." Yes, the unit "family" is a singular noun. However, it is comprised of individuals, and thus takes the grammatical person pronoun "they".
565
As you say, it is common in British English to treat collective nouns like "family" as plural entities. That is fine, it is up to the Brits. But it is an oddity in language, and illogical to most of us. American English does not do this. We say "family eats" and "families eat". Likewise, family is treated as singular in Spanish and all other languages I am familiar with, including Dutch, French and German. So British English is the exception. Its treatment of collective nouns will sound wrong to everybody except for Brits.
What is important here is that you shouldn't try to apply British grammar to Spanish.