"He has more than her."
Translation:Tá níos mó aige ná í.
28 Comments
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Why would it not be Tá níos mó aige ná aici? Is this saying that he has her and he has other things as well? I was assuming it meant she has some, but he as more.
I would translate Tá níos mó aige ná aici as "He has more than she has". Ná in this case is used as a comparison word (than), which is followed by the object form, so it's just saying he has more than her.
Tá mé níos sinne ná í -> I am older than her.
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But the comparison is between aige and í? That doesn't make much sense. That sounds like it's saying "More is at him than she is."
It means that he has more than just her (or it). Like, say someone owns a window and a door. Talking about the window, you could say that, meaning that he has more than just 'it' (fuinneog is feminine)
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Saying you have more than just her is not common in English and for the most part sounds deeply uncomfortable without context. Far, FAR more commonly meant when one says "I have more than her" in informal English is "I have more than she does" and without any other context clues should always be assumed to be the intended meaning.
Does Irish in fact in everyday informal usage do what English does and shortens "than she does" ná aici to just "than her" ná í? If not, how does one say in Irish "I have more than her" as it would commonly be intended in English to be understood? Because I answered Tá níos mó agam ná aici and got marked wrong, because the answer had to be í.
I think the issue with this one is that the better translation for it would be 'He has more than it'.
But, to answer your question, no. This means literally just 'her'.
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That's good to know. And sure that seems a much better translation of the Irish. Of course, most of the time this construction comes up in my review, it's asking me to translate from English into Irish and when I got it marked wrong, I wasn't feeling clear whether Tá níos mó aige ná aici was even a proper Irish sentence meaning "He has more than she does."
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aici doesn't mean "she has" - you have to have tá in there to get from "at her" to "she has". So ná aici doesn't mean "than she has". I'm not sure there is any situation where ná aici makes sense.
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So, then, this is the grammatically consistent "he has more than her" as opposed to "he has more than she," which is to say that he has her and he as more as well? Since people now use "than her" to compare two people who are the subjects of the same verb, this sentence is now ambiguous.
Actually, I don't remember ever learning that that was the object case of the pronoun. Thanks again.
I'd say if you want to stress that he has her, you'd add a quantifier to it, much as you would do in English ("He has more than her" to mean that he has more than just her wouldn't said in my dialect, unless some mention had already been made about him having her)/
'Correct' English is determined by use. Nobody I know would say 'I am older than she' unless it was formal writing, which is something very different.
Since the program is by default using a prescriptive grammar in Irish, it should do the same in English. It's annoying when the English is poor, and I get something "wrong" even when I'm right!
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I wouldn't say that either, but neither would I say I am older than her--that hurts my ears! In the actual sentence under discussion, though, Duo rejected the compromise He has more than she does, which doesn't hurt my ears and (I hope) doesn't sound weird to those who do say than her. I reported it--maybe it's accepted now.
PS I'm afraid I'm more prescriptive than you--in my area of the US, the simple past is regularly used instead of the past participle for a number of verbs, including swim and run. As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't make I should have ran correct.
Indeed, 'I have more than she does' sounds correvt to me, but 'I have more than she' sounds... odd. And, yep. I'm not prescriptivist at all when discussing colloquial speech. Now, formal writing and speech is a different story.
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Tell that to Duo! They consistently use the accusative in thei sentence and count the nominative usage wrong.
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That's because it is wrong. Accusative is the correct case after the verb, even when the verb is to be. Duo is right.
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If it is a comparison between two agents, the nominative was traditionally the required case and should be accepted. Most people now interpret "than" as a sort of preposition and use an object case after it, but "her" is probably not being interpreted as the object of the verb "to have," so it should not be in an accusative case for that reason. It could, of course, be, if what the speaker was saying was that he has her and he has other things besides her. This is an ambiguous sentence in English, however, since most people now interpret "than her" as a prepositional phrase, so it might also mean he has more things than she has. Traditionally, these sentences were not ambiguous, as "he has more than she" would mean that they both have things, though he has more, and "he has more than her" would mean that he has several things, of which she is one.
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The English is consistently wrong on the cue sentences and in the answers. Correct answers like He has more than she and He has more than she does are not accepted. You are correct--the actual meaning of the English answer you are supposed to give does not mean what I think the writers meant it to mean.
To me, "I have more than him" is what an arrogant young woman with a string of men on the line might reply upon hearing the news that one of her suitors has found another woman.
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"He has more than I/he/she" is not correct. "me/him/her" is the correct form here. Duo is correct.
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While the correct translation of the Irish Tá níos mó aige ná í is indeed "He has more than her" it's an unconfortable sentence in any context other than maybe pets.
However Duolingo often asks this question the other way around. In that case, the better translation of standard American usage "He has nore than her" is Tá níos mó aige ná aici.
http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/30930/than-her-versus-than-she
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Why is "He has more than her" an uncomfortable sentence? Am I missing something? It seems perfectly fine to me. "Give Mary one of Brian's cakes. He has more than her."
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The Irish sentence for what you're expressing is Tá níos mó aige ná aici The sentence in this exercise Tá níos mó aige ná í basically is saying that he owns her, but he also owns more than just her. That's what I meant by uncomfortable. The English sentence "He has more than her" could have either meaning, so either Irish translation should work, but currently Duolingo only accepts the ná í one.
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Definitely the syntax is ambiguous. I was referring to the usage, though. Expressing ownership of something you would describe as gendered, in English, is fairly rare. In most cases, aside from talking about pets and a few other similar scenarios, expressing ownership of "her" or "him" makes for a distressing, uncomfortable social interaction.
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Ok, I understand now, but I think the word you want is "ambiguous". "Uncomfortable" is a strange word to describe grammar and the sort of stuff we're talking about here, and leads to misunderstandings, like this one.
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Could this sentence be structured as follows and still be considered good Irish:
"Tá níos mó ná í aige" ?
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So, if the intent were to say, 'He has more than she has' - we'd say 'Tá níos mó aige ná tá aicí ' ? That sounds a little odd, maybe something is missing.
