"هُناك كِتاب صَغير وَوِشاح كَبير في شَنْطَتي."
Translation:There is a small book and a big scarf in my bag.
23 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I never noticed and appreciated how Arabic and Hebrew (my mother tongue) are so compact! This a 12 word sentence in English, as opposed to 7 in Arabic and 6 in Hebrew.
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That's only because these Semitic languages are agglutinative, ie they glue words together such as the possessive pronoun, plus they don't have an indefinite article or the verb "to be" in the present, etc. It's not like when a good writer is compact thanks to a judicious choice of words...
In formal texts, the verb in sentences using certain phrases/conjunctions agrees with the nearest subject. Here, "there be" is one of these structures. The verb agreeing with the nearest subject, i.e. a small book, this sentence is sound in grammar as in a formal text.
I don't think that is a good enough reason for Duo to mark "there are" wrong.
To which formal texts are you referring? The subject of this sentence is the duo of book and scarf, and the plurality of that compound subject dictates the verb. On the table are an A and a B; in my bag are a scarf and a book; in my bag there are a scarf and a book. (Cf. There, in my bag, are a scarf and a book. A scarf and a book are there, in my bag. There is a scarf, and there is a book, in my bag. There are a scarf and a book, in my bag. There are a scarf and a book in my bag.)
You are wrong. For the correct grammar, please read this grammar link:
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kokagejone, your very first sentence shows you have a predilection for (over?)formal English. It would be more natural to end that sentence with the preposition "to". And giving " On the table are an A and a B" loses sight of the fact that in "There is an A and a B on the table", the first word - "there" - is "an indefinite subject with no real meaning", as described in the excellent link provided by phuvtuo below.
Nope unfortunately you are wrong, to use " there are" there would have to be more than one book and more than one scarf....e.g.
There are 2 books and 2 scarves.
There is one book and one scarf is short for " there is one book and there is one scarf.
I know it's not very easy to understand but hey ho!
When checking our answers and the correct answers are shown, our answers are deleted. Thus we cannot compare our mistakes with the correct answers. Pedogogically, it would be better to show both. Is there a way to direct comments to those who can at least read the comments made directly?
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I wrote 'small' instead of short in the previous sentence.............it was wrong so i became smarter ! I wrote 'short' instead of 'small' in this one.................the rest can be assumed. I'm starting to guess that I could do a better job in building this course then the intellectuals who are doing it, though i've never spoken a bit of arabic in my life (¬_¬")
I used the word "large" for "big" and that was not accepted. I wonder why?
You must use the same word provided by the staff/contributors in the exercises, otherwise the site will consider it wrong. But in general it also means large, great major etc.....
