"Pojken frågar och flickan svarar."
Translation:The boy is asking and the girl is answering.
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Was that wrong? I thought it could be that because I answered another one earlier with "The boy questions the girl" and it was using the same verb as used here and it was right... For this one it seemed more natural to me to try "The boy asks and the girl answers" which was correct, so I'm not sure if using "questions" was wrong :/
See Lundgren8 above – förhör and ifrågasätter are better translations of the verb 'questions'. It is possible that this translation is currently accepted somewhere, but it still isn't a good one.
Are you asking if frågar could be a plural noun as well? If so, the answer is no. The plural of fråga is frågor.
No, in English 'question' and 'ask' can both be used as verbs. "The police are questioning a suspect" or "I question the wisdom of this action" for examples. I was wondering if 'the boy questions (v) and the girl answers' is a valid translation for the sentence, or if Swedish would differentiate the two with a different word.
I’d use förhöra for ’the police question’ and I’d use ifrågasätta for ’I question the wisdom’.
"explain" is förklara. I mean, the girl could be answering a question without explaining something. :)
Would "The boy asks a question and the girl answers" work as a translation for this sentence?
In real life that could work, but in the course we want the answers to be a little more exact. A closer Swedish translation of what you wrote would be Pojken ställer en fråga och flickan svarar.
We accept "The boy asks and the girl answers" and "The boy is asking and the girl is answering", but I don't think it makes a lot of sense to mix them up.
It may not be colloquial or literary usage but it is definitely not grammatically incorrect. As to adding it or not, it is totally up to you. :)
Remembering my childhood though I'd sooner say "Pojken frågar inte men flickan svarar".
If find the and in this sentence so unnecessary, nearly every time I forget it, in English a coma works fine and the sentence flows better: the boy asks, the girl answers
The sentence isn't really grammatical that way in English. You want different punctuation, and while I respect your opinion, I think you'll find that a lot of natives disagree with you about what sounds natural here.
Oh I totally see that, but what I'm saying is that an English phrase would probably omit the 'and' and so as a translation to English it sort of doesn't work. As a non native I have much to learn and so when constructing sentences in Swedish this is worth knowing and I thank you for your help. As they say "every days a school day"
That is indeed an unfortunate truth - if you haven't already, you'll likely encounter quite a few sentences with unnatural or unidiomatic English translations, that have to be there in order to better teach the Swedish.
I wish this had pointed out I had a typo on "the boy" instead of saying it was wrong, because it took me a long time to see I wrote "the boys asks". Thought it was wrong because I didn't put a period in the end lol
I'll add that. :) We only had the version with "... is answering", so the is-less option was missing.
1014
Just my thoughts on this from a native Canadian speaker (there are differences with British and American English), so any other native English speaker feel free to jump in. If you wish to use "ing" at the end, as in @Stephan's question, then you need a helping verb, in this case "is". I think you may get away with, "The boy is asking and the girl answers", but then I think you may be mixing tense, meaning past, present and future? Anyhow, Duolingo's answer sounds the most grammatically correct to me for "Pojken frågar och flickan svarar." Even if I'm native English speaker, I must say, Grammar was not my best subject in school ;-). So, here are two links that may explain it better:
https://writingexplained.org/is-is-a-verb, and https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-3/verbs-types-tenses-and-moods/lesson-4/helping-verbs.
I hope this helps?
Take Care & Stay Safe
The first "is" can be considered to cover both, depending on style. So it's not that it's missing - it's just that it isn't absolutely required twice.
- 1014
Tack, I'm just letting you know that normally I don't hear or it a phrase like that normally. You are right that it would be grammatically correct though. Cheers
Im so mad, i put "the boy asks and the girl answers" (without period) and it said it was wrong
"The boy is asking and the girl is responding."
Why this answer is considered incorrect?
What did I do wrong?It's the second time I wrote it correct and I got that it's incorrect