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- "Nosotros habíamos conocido a…
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one of Duolingo's hallmark weird sentences! I am fine with it by now totally
In Japan, foreigners like to make lists of all the funny Japlish expressions used in advertising. Having spent months on Duo, I feel I should have started my list of "hallmark weird sentences" (Harbourview's term) in the spring.
2483
Thank-you, mohrchen. :-) When I did that I also came across a Facebook page called Shitduosays/ ❤❤❤❤ Duolingo Says . That page has quite a number of howlers too. All in all they made me laugh out loud many times.
"We had known our mother, until she killed a man. Then she was another person to us." Could it be used in that context?
We had known our mother, but only as Mrs. Bittles, the church organist, because we were adopted.
- 2065
We had known our mother get up at six to light the fire on a regular basis, but this morning the house was cold....
If you ask me, yes, but in that sense you'll drop the "had". We knew ... until. or maybe something like "We thought we knew until" La conocíamos hasta que, Creíamos que la conocíamos hasta que..
We had known our mother, all along, not realizing we were switched at birth!
What an odd sentence. But I guess perhaps there are some who do not know there mothers. Qué triste.
Thanks clay261 - I can't believe I wrote "there." I must have been tired - that's my excuse & I'm sticking to it! And I am one who always notices when someone writes "your" instead of "you're." :)
This is just a guess but I think I read that DL use algorithms to construct phrases so that the lessons and practice sessions are not always the same - nouns, verbs, tenses etc.. are switched around by the DL algorithm rather than human prepared examples. While this may end up with phrases like the red elephants live in Spain and like cheese (I made that one up), it is still linguistically correct and allows for more variety in each exercise rather than just dragging out the same exercise over and over again. However, I may be wrong.
Could this be "we had met our mother" in the sense of "met for coffee" or whatever? Or does conocer only apply to "meeting" someone for the first time/being introduced?
I wanted to try it but didn't - holding on to hearts. Glad to know it is accepted.
I also responded "We had gotten to know our mother." Does anyone know why this is wrong?
I think it's because that implies that you were in the process of meeting her (as if for the first time). This sentence, though, has more of a "we used to know her, but not any more" connotation.
- 1544
On the other hand I would use this Spanish sentence if "we had gotten to know our mother" the day before, after having been adopted after birth and brought up by foster parents.
For everyone who is confused - conocido can also mean "met". "We had met our mother" was accepted.
Also did anyone else misread conocido at first and think it said "coninado"?
For a second I thought, "Who would be horrible enough to cook their mother?!"
- 2276
Now I'm confused: I though that "nosotros" means "us" (male), while "nosotras" means "us" (female).
Actually, nosotros can mean either "us" (male) or "us" (male+female mixed group). And as TilEulenspiegel mentions, "Nosotros" in this case is the subject of the sentence. Nuestra is modifying madre, & since madre is feminine, we need the "nuestra" form of the possesive pronoun, "our." Paz.
- 119
Guess this is an English question, but how or why would one use We had know or mother rather that We knew our mother? or course same time... google translate recommends a translation of "we had met our mother" which makes seems to make better sense, mutiple uses, more useful etc. lol
- 1544
The problem is the different meanings of "meet" in English. The "had met" in the Google translation does not mean "had met up with" (by appointment) or "had bumped into" (by accident) but rather "we had made the acquaintance of" or "we had gotten to know".
Is the translation really considered incorrect if I did not use nosotros in front of habiamos ?
I can't imagine it would be counted wrong. The nosotros is most likely there for emphasis. I imagine the sentence being something like: our mother died when we were young, but some of the oldest siblings still remember her, as opposed to the youngest ones.
- 2065
I tried "We had been introduced to our mother" because conocer = to meet, but it was incorrect; I am not sure why, other than it isn't a direct, literal translation.
I believe that is becuase 'habiamos conocido' is the past perfect, which means 'had met'. So it is as ConfusedSquid says: "We had met our mother".
Is there a difference if I say: we knew our mother? I am struggling on the differences of how I would say it in English, the difference between had known and knew.
- 1544
@SamuelBoas: First the terminology: - "knew" is called the Simple Past (only one word); - "had known" is called the Past Perfect". If you just want to say that something happened in the past, you use the Simple Past e.g. "we ATE at 6 o'clock". But if you want to stress that something happened BEFORE something else in the PAST, then you've got 2 points of time in the past. In that case you use the Past Perfect for the earlier action and the Simple Past for the later action e.g. "We HAD EATEN before John ARRIVED". - "had eaten" (Past Perfect = first action) - "arrived" (Simple Past = later action) I hope that helps. By the way, what is your first language?
Thank you for the explanation. my first language is Dutch. I am from the Netherlands.
- 119
I'd think the default should be "We had met our mother" as in at the restaurant or someplace... but at least "We had met our mother" reports as correct.
That has to be a part of a whole sentence. Come on Duo, we can handle the whole thing.
I translated it to, "We had met our mother" thinking along the lines of someone who had been adopted. Then my mind went here: Cómo yo conocí a tu madre.
