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- Topic: Portuguese >
- "Meninos usam calças."
27 Comments This discussion is locked.
Ok so in the context of clothing, usar most appropriately means "to wear". Is that right? And vestir implies the act of putting on the clothes?
Think of it this way, Vestido (noun) is dress as in the article of clothing – and is masculine despite it is mostly women who wear them these days though that really was not the case years ago, just different types of dresses before (scroll down for full effect).
http://www.crossingtheoceansea.com/OceanSeaPages/OS-27b-OrderOfChrist.html
And Vestir is to get/be dressed (which is not quite the same as wear).
No.verbs are conjugated according to the person: 1st, 2nd, 3rd sing/pl, not according to the gender. Eles usam, elas usam.
why is boys USE pants wrong. Is it not also correct? Meninos usam calças velhos para limpar o chão
Yes, in such context it works, but i dont think that was the point Duo was supposed to teach. (Ps: calças velhAs)
as it shows a general truth, using "usar" is more common than "vestir". For further information check this out: http://www.duolingo.com/comment/634204
"Slacks" are a particular type of pants. Not all "pants" are "slacks":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slacks
Same with "jeans" and "chinos" and "khakis" and even "shorts" among others.
Slacks is not a commonly used term outside of the Southern hemisphere (occasionally and more formally in the US), but should also be accepted as correct, but sometimes all possible translations have not been included. You can send a message to the Duolingo team and I'm sure they'll correct this.
What's wrong with "the boys are wearing trousers"? Maybe it's because there's no "Os" at the beginning of the sentence?
The Portuguese sentence is a fact, not something that is going on now.
I agree. When you ask the dictionary what trousers are in Portuguese, it says calças..
Yes, the dictionary does show it is one of the definitions of "calças":
https://www.duolingo.com/dictionary/Portuguese/calças/bb150b57f1aa43dbe3bdf7a0477d7208
But, being a US company, Duolingo does teach US English so the preference here will always be "pants".
It does however accept UK English for answers so if a sentence is otherwise correct and does not accept "trousers" for "calças" then report as, "My answer should be accepted" so the Course Contributors can be made aware that a possible answer was overlooked.
Just to be clear here: Just because the sentence says, "boys wear pants" does not mean that is all boys wear, or that no one else regardless of gender wears pants.
