"Don't approach an angry parrot."

Translation: Noli appropinquare psittaco irato.

[Isaac3972]

Dont approach the angry parrot! He's probably drunk and might throw an owl at you!

[ThomasClarke9]

Or hurl a spear....or Iuppiter's thunderbolt it snatched five minutes ago.

[Solvind]

Is psittaco irato dative or ablative here?

[Moopish]

appropinquare takes the dative.

[Nick_Pr]

Dative

[Richlogos]

Consilium sapiens! :)

[SnarlsBarky]

I can't figure out why this word order is wrong: "Noli psittaco irato appropinare."

Advance thanks for help.

[smodee]

Word order is not wrong as far as I know, but you have misspelled the last word: appropinquare.

[TedBerkowitz]

As another comment states, you misspelled appropinquare.

However, I also think that you are not supposed to separate the phrasenoli appropinquare, i.e., I think that putting psittaco irato in between the two words is incorrect. Although, Duolingo seems rather lax overall regarding word order in this Latin course and I could be wrong so maybe your answer should be accepted?

The word noli here is the singular imperative form of the verb nōlō, nolle, meaning "to be unwilling". (It is the negated version of vōlō, which is "to be willing, to want".) Hence the literal translation of noli appropinquare is the command "be unwilling to approach". As a result, I don't think it makes sense to separate noli and appropinquare, though I'm not an expert and I could be wrong.

[Franz460815]

Neither can I

[h_sapiens]

I also did it in that same word order with correct spelling and the sentence was rejected (2020-03-01). Reported, but I'm not sure if the sentence is good.

[ChibuzorNd]

...aut ei fulmina vobis contorquet!

[ci4ic4]

Looks to me almost primus paeon, added to mine above

[stephanie.597]

Lol...according to a Latin professor I had....word order is almost irrelevant because the endings of the words themselves determine meaning. Duo at least uses a formulaic of sorts to "normalize" syntax.

[Yodo9000]

I think they try to use the most common word order for the phrases and sentences, so that people doing the course will learn a more natural Latin than if the word order was random every time.
And for translation into Latin they have to add all the possible word orders themselves.

[ci4ic4]

"psittaco irato noli appropinquare" not accepted. Obviously it should.

[RinZero]

I tried two different answers:

Psittaco irato nolite appropinquare

Psittaco irato noli appropinquare

I've checked these against the books I have and these both appear to be correct for saying "do not approach the angry parrot", one for 2sg, one for 2pl.

DL even gives what looks like the same answer: "Noli appropinquare psittaco irato".

But both of my answers were marked wrong.

Is there a specific rule I've missed that says nolo has to be at the start of the sentence, or is this a case of DL not knowing this a correct variant?

[David974744]

Shouldnt this be psittacum iratum? Its motion towards, and psittacus is 2nd declension.

[Moopish]

No, appropinquare is one of the special verbs that takes a dative, like studere.

Based on Lewis and Short it is used with the preposition ad.