"Die Kinder sind stärker als die Mütter."
Translation:The children are stronger than the mothers.
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So here is another example of the new Duo giving me an incorrect answer. I wrote: The children are stronger than the mother (notice I did not type an 's' to make it more than one mother, but just as I hit the check button, I thought, oh no, that should be mothers because of the umlaut...but Duo says, ding, you are correct. So, confused, I hover and sure enough the drop down says mothers as it should! I come here to double check. Duo, don't do this, please correct our mistakes so we can learn and confirm our correct answers. Please debug the program...
As an answer to a "type what you hear" question, I put Mutter as I was translating this as mother (singular). I was asked to pay attention to the accents. Is it wrong to translate this in the singular?
If the voice says Mütter with a short ü sound, you have to type Mütter and not Mutter.
...als die Mutter is grammatically correct but is not what the voices says (or at least not what it is supposed to say).
strong is a one-syllable adjective,which usually compare by adding the suffixes -er (for comparative) and -est (for superlative); cf. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/es/palabras/comparative-and-superlative-adjectives-american .
As a native English speaker, I'll try to explain why that sentence doesn't work.
In my mind, "The children are stronger than the mothers" places them in direct competition/opposition with the mothers. However, the "as" in "The children are stronger as the mothers" places the children on equal ground with the mothers.
"The children are as strong as the mothers" would be a grammatically correct statement, though with a different meaning.
Did that make sense? If not, I can try again. :)
As an native of the US, The children are stronger as the mothers. Makes no sense. You could say, The children are stronger than the mothers. Or, The children are as strong as the mothers. Stronger means more powerful, and therefore unequal. The word than is appropriate. Stronger than. To say the children are equal in strength. You would use the word as, as strong as.. The only way to make The children are stronger as the mothers. make sense at all, would be if it were a part of a much longer and far more complex sentence structure. Where it was made clear that the mothers and the children are in two separate competitions. And even then it would sound awkward and confusing. It implies a contradiction in terms.
Why is 'stärker' used here?
I thought die Mütter would be definite article, plural, accusative so therefore the adjective (stärker) would be stärken.
Even if I'm wrong with the case, none of the definite, plural decelnsions end with -er.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
stärker (stronger) is the comparative of stark (strong).
There is no gender, number, or case ending on the adjective, just the comparative ending.
Just as it would be die Kinder sind stark for "the children are strong" (no gender/number/case ending on the predicative adjective after "to be"), so it is also die Kinder sind stärker for "the children are stronger" without gender/number/case ending.
Why not "The children are more stronger?"
That is not correct English.
The comparative of "strong" is "stronger", not "more strong" or (worse) "more stronger".
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/strong?q=strong