"Yo no sé la edad de mis abuelos."
Translation:I don't know the age of my grandparents.
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this lesson is kinda weird in that i would normally say something more along the lines of "No sé cuántos años mis abuelos tienen"
I agree. But these kinds of mismatches are common in English, and I must admit "the ages of my grandparents" does sound a bit clunky in informal speech. It would be interesting to find out from native speakers if las edades de mis abuelos sounds similarly awkward in Spanish.
Definitely clunky! An English speaker wouldn't use age or ages in that statement, but instead would say "I don't know how old my grandparents are"
You could be filling out a form that asks their ages and go, "huh, I don't know my grandparents' ages!" But i agree that "age" singular feels weird.
Yes, it's weird to say that. To be honest, I have never heard someone say that, it's more common to just say "la edad de mis abuelos", because it refers the age of both grandparents without being specific.
Duo accepted my: "I don't know my grandparents' age."
However, I think better, and not at all clunky, would be ""the ages of my grandparents". Better because it is perhaps clearer.
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I think what Duo wants us to learn is that Spanish uses only "la edad," even if talking about more than one person, while English uses "the ages" if more than one. Just a quirk to learn.
This is an odd sentence. I would say "I don't know how old my grandparents are."
I put the correct response for Duo, but I'm wondering if one can also translate the sentence as, " I don't know my grandfathers ages."?
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Reading this reminded me that we have a paternal grandfather and a maternal grandfather. So I hope to learn too whether 'abuelos' can mean one's 'grandfathers'. (It would be a legitimate sentence such as in a discussion about grandfathers in general.)
In your English sentence there needs to be an apostrophe: "grandfathers' ages".
Thanks AndesSky, I appreciate you pointing that out to me. I will give you a Lingot, for all that is worth. :-)
The exact same ambiguity exists with padres, hermanos, niños, hijos, tíos, sobrinos, esposos, reyes, etc. and I have yet to find any universally accepted way of distinguishing them collectively.
So I usually just refer to them separately and specifically, eg la edad de mi abuelo paterno y mi abuelo materno.
Sometimes you can get away with male/female (varón/hembra) eg mis hijos varones (my male children) but it often provokes weird looks from the unsophisticated and doesn't work across family tree branches, eg mis abuelos varones comes across as my male grandparents---as if all four of them were male lol.
I got this one right, but to be accurate, the correct beginning sentence should have said "ages," not "age." Hoe many (2) grandparents are the same age?
Shouldn't this be "Yo no se las edades de mis abuelos?" since we're asking about one's grandparents (plural)?
wouldn't each grandparent have a different age? Why not "edades de mis abuelos"? I would say in English that I don't know the ages of my grandparents, or my grandparents' ages (having at least 2, maybe more). OR does Spanish consider "mis abuelos" as a unit and singular?
Poor grammar in any language. "I don't know the ages of my grandparents" is much better. Native English speakers wouldn't normally say that, though. Instead, they would say, "I don't know how old my grandparents are."
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Denzil and Forough, it's apparently just a difference in Spanish and English expression (or maybe logic). In English, we have four grandparents, so we talk about their ages. In Spanish, each of four grandparents has one age, so we talk about their age[no s].
