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- "La avino aĉetas pantalonon p…
"La avino aĉetas pantalonon por sia nepo."
Translation:The grandmother buys trousers for her grandson.
30 Comments
What root does nepo come from? The only possibly related word I can think of is "nepotism" :P. Or maybe Spanish nieto?
As the Wiktionary article says: "From Latin nepos (“grandson, granddaughter, nephew, descendant”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂népōts."
"sia" is the possessive you use when the person possessing it is the subject (his/her own). If you used "ŝia" here, the "her" would be a reference to someone else (another woman's grandsons). I hope that helped.
Yes, it is used a lot. His/her has really 2 meanings in English. Many languages like Russian for example are more precise. Esperanto too doesn't have that ambiguity that English has. A sentence like La patrino amas siajn infanojn is a very common sentence. You can't really avoid "sia".
Russian "его/её" also has at least 2 meanings: accusative case and possessive.
However there is also a specific word "свой", which works like "sia" in Esperanto
706
Yes, of course. I've gotten too used to seeing it second in declensions so my brain went down the wrong path. Good thing I clarified with specifics. :/ Fixed it. Thanks.
Odd: "a pair of pants" is accepted, as is "trousers", but not "a pair of trousers". I can't report it this time around as I screwed up with "nepo", translating it as though it were "nevo", so my answer isn't actually correct and can't be added. Maybe next time ;)
I think they can't account for every reasonable translation straight away, which is the reason for the report button and sadly American English takes precedence here as it does on a lot of the web (I'm reminded of the joke about the Catholics being behind a brick wall in heaven with the explanation that, 'They think they're the only ones here').
Although, the Welsh course does seem to favour rest-of-the-world English, which is one plus point about it.
No. The suffix"'pra" means "a very long time ago". You can use it for "great" in " great grandpa" but not for "grand" in "grandson".
My translation "buys" for "aĉetas" was considered as wrong, only "is buying" shown as correct.
Then I hope you reported it since this comments area is only for discussion among learners.
Though since the translation above has 'buys' I suspect there was something else wrong with it.
lol, I hate that. I sit cursing the computer because I know I've got the word right, only to realise I made a typo, or messed up another word I should have known :)
- 52
"The grandmother buys her grandson trousers" is perfectly acceptable idiomatic English. But not accepted by Duolingo. Reported.
It's always good to include:
- the type of exercise you're doing
- the whole sentence you entered
- the full correction
- any unused word tiles
- screenshot or copy-paste is best
if you're looking for meaningful feedback in the forum: It's always good to include:
- the type of exercise you're doing
- the whole sentence you entered
- the full correction
- any unused word tiles
- screenshot or copy-paste is best
