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- "Él bebe la sopa."
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That depends on the context and what country your talking about. About the soup, if you drink it or eat it, will depend if you are grtting it ffom the bowl or if you are using a spoon (and will depend also if the soup is thin or thik, you will never can drink a thik soup).
About the expression "tomar un helado" is juat a phrase to mean you are getting out with somebody to enjoy a good time and an ice cream.
I speak UK English. I am more likely to have soup as part of a meal (to eat) than as a beverage (to drink) although the latter isn't ruled out. (One could drink a liquid lunch, but my soups are lacking certain ingredients most often implied by the phrase.)
While it is more idiomatic for me to say "He eats the soup." (or at least more likely in my (English) idiolect) I can see both sides of this. A soup can be served as part of a meal, meals are eaten, so the soup is eaten. Liquids are drunk, so the soup is drunk.
The following exchange can easily happen in English:
- A: What are you going to have to eat?
- B: Soup.
The following (while not incorrect) is unlikely while eating out and, in my opinion, only likely informally:
- A: What are you going to have to drink?
- B: Soup.
If this did occur while eating out, at least in my region of the UK, I feel confident that it would be treated as a joke and you could then be asked something along the lines of: "Yes, but what are you going to (have for a) drink?"
I resolve this by keeping "eats the soup" as the more likely in my English idiolect, but my Spanish idiolect currently has "bebe la sopa".
Drinking or eating soup is cultural/historical. In many cultures people drink the soup directly from the bowl and do not use a spoon. Also remember that tableware for eating is a modern invention in context to human life on earth and eating habits. This is helpful to think about for gender issues as well with words. For instance, in Spanish the dress is "El Vestido." In German and Spanish dress is masculine! Now, logically you would say how strange! Why is it not La Vestida? BUT, think about things historically. Men and Women wore tunics/vestaments=dress and hose before pants were invented! Think about kilts that many men in cultures wore (Teutonic/Celtic.) Many times when you come across these things look up the history and it becomes quite fun and helps to clarify the quandry.
Picture if you will a conversation in your kitchen. A nice cream of vegetable soup is simmering on the stove. Your guests all reach for the bowls and spoons except for Jim. Jim grabs himself a mug. Everyone stops cold and stares at Jim.
Good host that you are, you point out to the others: ''Él bebe la sopa''.
Order is restored.
I'm pretty sure it's been known to happen. :-)
I am afraid you are slightly mistaken on both counts. Firstly, "He drinks the soup" is an entirely correct English sentence. It is the present tense and refers to an action as it occurs. "He is drinking the soup" is a different tense: the 'present continuous'. The point of making this distinction is that it is used to refer to ongoing actions, and it is also a different tense in other Romance languages like Spanish.
Secondly, if you want to say "he is drinking", you use estar + the present participle, e.g. "él está bebiendo". So the Duolingo translation is correct.
Gracias mitaine56 What I meant was without having the sentence in full, if I have a noun we need to familiarise ourselves whether the noun is masculine or feminine so we can use the appropriate gender descriptive eg here we know sopa is feminine so we know we need to use La sopa... so we need to know for eg what gender is Banana or apple and other nouns like that.
So misleading if you ask me. Duo teaches us the bebe is drink. Even when it sounds odd to use drink instead of drinks we still had to use drink for the check. So of course when i see the sentence él bebe la sopa, i translate it as he drink the soup because thats how Duo wanted it in past. Now switched it up and its now drinks.
Conflicting coz half the time idk when to trust my gut or not for the sake of being super precise for the check.