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- Topic: German >
- "Wir essen Kartoffeln."
33 Comments
435
Google translate wants to translate "Fritten" from Luxembourgish, not from German. I can understand that they say "Fritten" in Luxembourg, because Belgium is their neighbour: "friet".
435
Why is there a need for a continuous form in English? This form does not exist in German. "Wir essen" means both "we eat" and "we are eating".
You really can't. Unless you were given "wir essen gerade Kartoffeln" (or dialectal "wir sind am Essen", German simply doesn't do a present continuous. This is a bit of an ongoing puzzle to me since Duolingo switched from mandatory "type in the translation" to "click on the matching tiles". Basically before I start on any given exercise, I first locate the verb and check if it is in the -ing form so I know what kind of sentence I have to construct. It seems to me the choice of the English translation is quite arbitrary; I haven't spotted any system behind when it's simple present and when it' s continuous.