"लोग बिस्तर पर सो रहे हैं।"
Translation:The people are sleeping on the bed.
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Can this be "beds" or is the plural of बिस्तर different? Plural was not accepted, so I have to ask.
There are two ways to interpret बिस्तर in this sentence.
First is if we are talking about one bed. In which case the translation given would be correct. However, to make it clear that this is the case one can use इस / उस / एक बिस्तर.
Another interpretation is that it refers to bed in general without any reference to any particular bed. In such a case you can say, "[The] People are sleeping on-bed." (Similar to in-flight)
If you had to specifically say, "People are sleeping on the beds." you would have to use the plural बिस्तरों.
If I understand your explanation correctly, the most appropriate translation would be "The people are in bed asleep" or "asleep in bed."
Could we have an answer to that one? I still get confused by the different emphases depending on the order of phrases in the sentence.
A Hindi sentence in the usual word order (Subject-object-verb) may be translated into as SVO in English. So, लोग बिस्तर पर सो रहे हैं would be 'People are sleeping on the bed'.
The word order is changed from the usual order to add some kind of nuance to the meaning. Here, for instance, moving the subject लोग to a later position changes the emphasis in a similar way that the 'There are' construction does in English. So, बिस्तर पर लोग सो रहे हैं is 'There are people sleeping on the bed'.
I put, "The people on the bed are sleeping." I used all of the same words and it carried exactly the same meaning. Please explain what makes it incorrect.
The subject of the sentence लोग बिस्तर पर सो रहे हैं/'The people are sleeping on the bed' is लोग/'The people'. It answers the question 'Who is sleeping on the bed?'.
On the other hand, the subject of the sentence 'The people on the bed are sleeping' is 'The people on the bed'. So, it is the answer to the question 'Who is sleeping?'.
It would be translated into Hindi as either बिस्तर के ऊपर के लोग सो रहे हैं or जो लोग बिस्तर पे हैं, वे सो रहे हैं (literally, 'The people who are on the bed are sleeping').
Does बिस्तर refer to the entire bed per se, or just the mattress, or the cot? Is चारपाई still used to refer to cots or bedframes?
As far as I know बिस्तर is for the entire bed, गद्दा is the mattress, and cot...well, that just comes from the hindi word खाट! I don't know the word चारपाई, but from a google search it seems to be a woven bed.
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Yes, that also means bed. I think that बिस्तर refers to the whole thing: frame, mattress, etc and पलंग means like bed or sofa.
पलंग refers to the cot though it can also be used to refer to the whole setup.
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My answer was: "People have been sleeping on the bed.", which DuoLingo marked as wrong, even though the hover hint does indicate "have been" as a translation of "so rahe". So could you please explain to me why that was a wrong response? Thanks.
The correct translation for 'The people have been sleeping on the bed' is 'लोग बिस्तर पर सोते रहे हैं।
However, you're right that Hindi often substitutes the present continuous (सो रहे हैं) in place of the present perfect continuous (सोते रहे हैं), especially when a reference time is included (i.e, when there is no room for ambiguity). For example, it is more common to say लोग पिछले साल से बिस्तर पर सो रहे हैं। instead of लोग पिछले साल से बिस्तर पर सोते रहे हैं। for 'The people have been sleeping on the bed since last year' because the phrase 'पिछले साल से' makes it clear what we mean.
It's going for a literal translation.
"People are sleeping on beds' would be लोग बिस्तरों पर सो रहे हैं.