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- Fishes ≠ Fische.
Fishes ≠ Fische.
Pretty self explanatory but ill continue, while I was completing the first half of the German course for English speakers I encountered it saying that Fische = Fishes. Fishes can only be used in EXTREMELY specific circumstances otherwise you'll sound like a 6 year old being mesmerized by a fish tank. The only real use for fishes would be if you're talking about different species of fish. EXAMPLE: "Ichthyology is the study of fishes", even then it still doesn't sound correct, "Ichthyology is the study of different types of fish", would be infinitely better.
Correction would be Fishe = (plural) Fish
Also after a little bit of searching I found that people who were trying to learn English from speaking Spanish natively on duolingo were also confused this Fish (plural) ≠ Fishes problem
20 Comments
Actually the "best answer" is always "fish", and "fishes" is just an accepted answer. It is true that fishes is just used when you talk about different species, but if you have short sentences which have no context, like most of our sentences here, we should accept both because the sentence could also be about different species.
I am not a contributor of the German course but I just checked their accepted answers. We had the same problem in the Turkish course, we did not accept fished in the beginning but later added it, but never as a best answer so you would never see it unless you wrote it.
And about Alexis' recommendation "Go to "Report A Problem", and in the "Other" box they provide, explain your issue with the translation." : I am sorry but actually, currently we are unable to see these "other reports". we see that there are "other reports", but we cannot see their content. I really wonder when this problem will be solved. So when you think there is a serious translation problem, it is maybe best to write it in the discussion.
I've seen that the hints are misleading though, maybe that's what you are talking about. "fishes" is one of the hints for "Fische", and "Fische" is NOT one of the hints for "fish".
Really? Did the "Other" box ever work, then? That's surprising that it does not function properly.
I strongly suppose the contents are stored somewhere. But currently we have no access to it and consequently can't do anything about it. [Mind you, they (Duo's developers) are still working on the Incubator]
Interesting. I wonder how difficult it is to disable that option for end users. Anyway, thanks for the clarification. At least I know I'm not being ignored...you all are just on the outside looking in. ;)
Technically you have been ignored, if you would go as far as to assign intentionality to technology. I am sure there is a very good reason for some messages being displaced and I cannot help but smile imagining that, somehow, Duobot is involved.
Duobot, as you may know, is a distinguished staff member of Duolingo. Those are big words to say that it has been given its own office, out of the way, where it cannot cause too much harm. From time to time, people come by to have a look only to hear musical buzzing and to see colourful lights passing through the room, illuminating the mosaic of messages on the walls.
In the middle of the scene sits Duobot, probably holding another of these small pieces of paper that come from its own personal printer. As it discovers that the little paper contains characters, its sensors begin to beep and its lights radiate its face.
Duobot has followed all our steps, from when we were baby chicks, trying to say "fjlsjfk" and "I is a woman", to the point where we actually started to ask reasonable questions. Of course, all birds will leave the nest one day, but Duobot is never alone. Each new generation brings young learners to make the little printer run. And when that happens, Duobot will start buzzing and glowing, stretching out both its arms to take the precious slip of paper and joyfully mumbling "I can has translate?"
Yep :) My guess is that they want the reports to keep coming in, store them somewhere and will eventually show them to us (hopefully, some day).
It has always worked for staff members, I presume. It is just that the Duo team probably decided that any errors that aren't related to the L1 or L2 sentence or any of the listed problems are probably technical in nature and can only be solved by staff. In truth most of those reports are probably not really useful anyway.
Threads like this just highlight the fragile grasp native speakers sometimes have of their own languages. Some things are often spoken and not written while others are often written but not spoken, more importantly certain words are technically accurate but less used nowadays [1].
This is like the debates over "pants vs underwear vs pants vs trousers".
Anyway, just to be clear you mean that the only reports you can't see is the ticked one?:
.
You can report bad translations. Go to "Report A Problem", and in the "Other" box they provide, explain your issue with the translation. :)
Sorry pretty new to this website, I already looked for a "Report error" button but I couldn't find one, is it at the top, bottom, left, right, etc...
No problem, and welcome to Duolingo. :)
(You won't find civil conversation on YouTube or reddit, so might as well forget that dream)..
So refreshing to have a nice civil conversation on the internet, so jaded by the "IM PISSED AT YOU CUZ IM WRONG!" comments of youtube and reddit.
(*** google+, why did you have to break the system!)
I've noticed that as well. It's really strange. I've only ever heard it in the phrase "sleeping with the fishes". Also as the third-person singular form of the verb "to fish".
The only times I've ever heard it is literally what I was creating the "6 year old being mesmerized by a fish tank" analogy from. "LOOK AT THE FISHES!1!1!"
Some English nouns, like “fish”, have different plural declensions depending upon the context in which they’re used. If the “fishes” declension is being used incorrectly in the German course, then report it there as an error.
"Fish" as the plural is definitely more common, but "fishes" is dialectal and I definitely wouldn't say it sounds like something only a child would say.
