46 Comments
I have to disagree. If I ask an Italian 'Come vecchio sei?', would I be understood as asking his age? Probably not. This is an important example of languages working in different ways. If Duolingo accepts your answer, they will just be coddling us, not teaching us.
The problem is how often Duolingo requires an exact literal translation. Most of the time it expects us to give a literal translation, even if it doesn't make much sense in English. When it goes against that, as it does here, it can be annoying, because it lacks consistency.
The problem is theyre using the same lessons for both sides, explaining the lack of consistency between literal and non-literal bequests
Exactly! But if we just learn Italian words and insist on imposing English structure upon them, then we're bound to offend native Italian speakers who aren't familiar with English.
Yeah, I see so often how people complain about lessons always thinking about the english and never about the italian, people seem to forget what they're studying xD
It is not a matter of disregarding italians it is a matter of proper teaching. How are we to learn what should be literally translated and when it shouldn't be when it is never clarified.
Additionally, when the phrase is in Italian and it is asking for me to translated to English it should accept 'how many years are you' because that makes sense in translation. Now if I flip it and translate carelessly from literal english to italian I can see how it would be seen as rude.
39
What if you want to ask, "how many years do you have, to do this work?" as if you want to know the time, that a person was given to complete something.
http://www.reverso.net/translationresults.aspx?lang=ENdirection=english-italian
I think in English and in Italian you would include "to do" or fare http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-italian/How+many+years+do+you+have+to...
I am Dutch and in our language we say "how many years are you", so I feel like it should be counted as correct. Besides, sometimes duolingo wants us to translate literally...so why not here?
I know Dutch and German (which I'm also learning) are brothers of the Germanic language family. While I expect them to share some differences despite looking similar (unsure if Dutch's grammar sentence structure is similar to German's), I wonder if German shares a similar phrase and meaning.
- 1480
Agree with MariannR, It's better to have the implied meaning than the literal translation. Grazie
- 247
Agree and disagree. If you are learning a language, keep it simple for beginners. If the translation is not literal but abstract, you are creating confusion. Should be avoided for the beginner.
It should at least be accepted, with an extra note saying the context was the subjects age.
No, you would be missing something at the end in English. "How many years do you have left?" or "How many years do you have to do....." We don't say this for someone's age in English. We always say "How old are you?" and the answer would again always include the word "old" as in "I am 21 years old." http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-italian/How+many+years+do+you+have+to...
http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-italian/How+old+are+you
http://italian.about.com/od/verbs/a/italian-verb-avere_3.htm
- 1313
I agree. Although "How old are you" is the obvious idiomatic translation, DL should recognize a grammatically correct literal translation while we're learning the essentials of grammar. That's not "coddling". I did the "how many years do you have" just to test DL. Of course, it should also accept the idiomatic answer.
It shouldn't because this isn't a sentence that should be transliterated. It is an idiom and it means "how old are you?".
in school? Working? trying to find a job? For an English speaker your translation does not make sense in the context that you want to use it.
Thank you!! I was just about to say that. When i studied italian in university it literally translated to that and its correct. Italian can not be translated word for work into english no language can
Since the literal translation is a valid sentence, it should be accepted
Can you ask a sober addict this and mean the litteral meaning? Like you do in English.
I came here to see if anyone addressed this. For someone in recovery, they acknowledge the amount of time sober. If I wanted to ask how many years they've been sober, some places I believe people ask "how many years do you have?" In Italian, would they phrase it the same, or totally rephrase it?
How many years do you have should be accepted, because this is the literal translation. You will confuse people with this being an error.
Seriously? You require painfully literal translations everywhere else to even the ugliest of phrases, and now, once you've trained me to not answer idiomatically, you mark a literal translation wrong? Stupidaggine!
I tried both "What age are you?" and "What's your age?"... both were rejected. So apparantly only one idiomatic answer is considered correct and all the rest discarded. After 4 years you would think DuoLingo would have sorted this out.
"What age are you?" is how we ask "how many years" you have. I want my heart back.
- 15
I agree. The literal translation teaches the meaning of the words and how sentences are constructed in Italian.
A lot of native English speakers are of the opinion that "how many years do you have?" should be accepted. I think that It would be okay to accept it as long as DL gave a disclaimer like "you have entered the literal translation, please do not mistake the literal translation for the meaning of the phrase, which is ...". I don't think that anyone is getting confused about the meaning of phrase. It's just that most of us need to memorize the literal translation to be able to recall the idiom.
The literal translation IS a meaning of this question. A disclaimer denying it would be misleading.
For anyone having trouble with this, this is how ALL Romance languages ask about a person about his/her age. While the Italian sentence literally asks, "How many years do you have?", it would sound improper if said languages had a word to word version of "How old are you?" for English speakers. I had a person trying her Spanish on me ask, "¿Como viejo eres usted?" and I got confused what she meant, but helped her as I quickly picked up on what she's trying to say. In short, you CANNOT treat the language you're all learning like your native tongue. It's a different world.
Would you also use this with babies younger than one year old?
e.g.,
"Quanti anni ha la tua bambina?" (For a neighbor's few weeks old baby girl.)
Or would it then be something like: "Qual è l'età della tua bambina?"
As for here we do not translate" how many years you have?!!." so for the other question it is much better to change it to "What is your birth date? ". nd if you want to teach the word "birthday " teach it in another phrase.
In English we ask: "What is your birthday? If we ask "What is your birthdate?" you would be required to give the year you were born.
Would: "Cosa è la tua età?" (What is your age?) be understood?
While I understand that Quanti anni hai?
would be the common way of asking someone's age,
like How old are you? in English,
in many languages there is more than one way of asking this.
(The common way, the polite way, and sometimes even more.)
