24 Comments
1328
I'm pretty sure it refers to the use of electronic networks as a replacement for physical space. Videoconferencing is probably the most relevant example. "What meeting room is the meeting taking place in?" "The net itself is the room."
I googled this phrase, and the only place it occurs on the entire Internet is in a Wikipedia article on Schleifenquantengravitation ("Loop quantum gravity"), or in pages quoting that article.
As far as I can tell (knowing little about German and even less about quantum physics), it should be translated there as "The network is the space," and it seems to be talking about a mathematical model of space as a network of nodes.
Makes me wonder if Duolingo gets some of it phrases from Wikipedia articles. I can't blame anyone for being frustrated with this one.
That seems plausible. The German course is one of the oldest courses on Duolingo, and originally all the sentences for Duolingo were to be sourced from web pages.
Interesting - because that was my first thought...I also know NOTHING about quantum physics! But I was thinking of "Raum" as "Weltraum"...and it does seem at times that the internet can (in an exaggerated way) be compared to the universe! I thought this was some kind of symbolic comparison. But I also like the idea that the internet can act as a room...I guess like a "chat room"...?
I think that's the interpretation that makes the most sense (which still isn't a whole lot). The old Sun Microsystems slogan was "the network is the computer", so maybe this is supposed to parallel that.
'Das Netz' does probably refer to the internet here. There might be contexts in which this sentence makes sense. Whitout any context, it doesn't.
- 1552
Exactly. I had no clue how to translate it because it didn't make sense. At least I can understand "Duo wants to be a penguin" and "I am a penguin."
It would be more helpful if DL stuck to every day dialogue instead of going off on one like it occasionally does here z.B. All this does is frustrate people and make them look for other methods to learn.
For what it's worth, I appreciate the occasional grammatically correct bizarre sentence. It really tests your knowledge of the language, rather than allowing you to "cheat" by getting the meaning from context.
Although I agree that there shouldn't be too many of these.
Somewhat agreed, though language is about communication, not about "being right/correct". There's something unnatural in orphaned sentences as are on the DL exercises... I guess that's why the translation practice can be so useful.
- 660
"The bicycle itself is the pudding."
Well, it means as much as the sentence in this exercise.
