"A school has male and female students."
Translation:Ludus discipulos et discipulas habet.
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618
Ludus is the subject case (nominative) that has to be used here, since the school is the subject of the sentence. The school has students. The students are in their accusative case. (Ludo would be for dative and ablative.)
- 90
discipuli -> nominative plural -> The nominative form is used when the word is the subject, the one doing the action. "The students are going to the school." -> Discipuli ad ludum eunt.
discipulos -> accusative plural -> The accusative is often used when the word is the direct object, the word that the action is being done to. "The teacher has students" -> Magister discipulos habet.
I have seen someone else on the forms make comparisons to how 'they' and 'them' are used in English. Discipuli would be used like 'they'. Discipulos like 'them'.
- 848
I missed the previous explanation about the verbs to be and to have, but I will make my question here... Are there cases when est and habet are interchangeable?
Probably, although schola could imply a high level of learned discourse and could have the connotation of followers of a particular philosophy. Ludus is probably best but we have no context so it's a wash. If we're going to quibble, it's dubious that there would be discipulas in a ludus -- given concerns about pudor, it's quite unlikely that a Roman would allow a slave (paedagogus) to have access to his daughter without supervision. It's conceivable that a Roman would hire a paedagogus to come to his home to teach his daughter under the supervision of female slaves.
- 808
it should really be ludus et discipulos et discipulas habet. ie both male students and female students
You raise a great point: it could be et ... et. Another thought: girls didn't usually become students, and given the rarity of that situation, which is sexist to us, non solum...sed etiam would be appropriate.
This is one of very many questions recently that ask to translate from English to Latin that I've gotten wrong and the "Correct Answer" is given in English, basically repeating the sentence I was given in the first place. I've reported them as using the button as "The Correct Solution is wrong or unnatural". But then when I click on a comment thread like this one, the correct answer, in Latin, always shows up. I'm not sure if the people looking at the reports will see the Correct Answer as the one that I'm seeing (ie, in English) or the Correct Answer that shows up in the comment thread, and then think I'm trolling them because there's nothing wrong.
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If it happens again, try to get a screen shot, and submit it to Duo as a bug report. Here (https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new) is the link to submit a report.
- 90
ludus is used since it is the subject of the sentence, the thing that is 'having'.
It is the nominative singular form.