20 Comments
How can you tell if 'Dia' translates as he or she? Is it just the context of the conversation?
yes, there is no specific gender attached to the meaning of "dia". it could be both.
139
This keeps coming up for me. Why is "Kalian menulis menu" have "You write the menu" as an accepted answer but here "He writes the book" not accepted.
“he”, “she”, or “it” requires “writes” our only different conjugation for the verb and all the other pronouns use “write”.
Not “writers” which are people who write, but “writes” is used for 3rd person singular conjugation.
- 352
it means that dia menulis buku means she writes book not books...,.. duolingo said that I was wrong...but I think that duolingo is wrong
For English you must either put “a book” or “books”. We require an article for the singular. If you put “She writes a book.” and it is not accepted, then you could report it as a correct alternate answer.
Both of those are correct for the plural as well. I have heard that reduplication is a formal form and often people just don’t bother.
- 352
But ..... dia menulis buku? Is it correct as well? And I see all the lessons there are not used sebuah and double word for plural as well. I understand then plural is used there is no misunderstanding, but in some cases you cant understand from the sentence is it plural or not.
That is true and yes it is also correct, so Duolingo will usually accept both singular and plural for those.
No. Just no.
- "He is (currently) writing a book"
- "He (just/previously) wrote a book" or at best: "He is (now) writing a book".
There is NO "he writes a book"! (With rare exceptions like weird literary uses like "In protest, he writes a book to rebel against them" or something. It's VERY uncommon.
In kindergarten and first grade, children write books very often. They are very short books, about eight to twelve pages long. “He writes a book.” can happen then also. You are thinking that writing a book is a long ongoing thing, but not always, sometimes it is a repetitive thing.
In that case it would be "he writes short stories" or "he does writing exercises".
No, they actually make book covers for them. These are books with very simple language for very young readers. A short story can have quite difficult and long sentences that they wouldn’t even be ready to read yet. A writing exercise could be on multiple pages, but it would not have a book cover and does not necessarily have a story plot.
