"Is Australia a continent?"

Translation: Ĉu Aŭstralio estas kontinento?

[Zaukaj]

Nah, it's just king of the islands.

[kaleb.haugen]

Why is «Ĉu estas aŭstralio kontinento» not accepted?

[HerrArbo]

I don't know if "ĉu estas Aŭstralio kontinento" is correct or not, but thinking this way helped Duolingo's preffered word order make more sense to me:

If you think of "ĉu" as "is the following correct?", then the phrase "ĉu: Aŭstralio estas kontinento?" with an imaginary colon would be "is this correct: Australia is a continent".

That might not be very helpful, but it worked for me.

[Majklo_Blic]

It is now.

[Happy_-Life]

Can anyone tell me why 'Cxu Auxstralio kontinentas?' does not work. Thank you in advance.

[Rae.F]

You can verb adjectives to mean "to be [adj]", but you can't verb nouns to mean "to be [n]". Verbing a noun means you're using the noun. Kind of like "hammer" in English.

[JoshLingo1800]

I think because a continent is not a state of being, but a noun. So the sentence would mean, " Is Australia continenting?", which doesn't make sense, to me anyway.

[lethal_gnome]

...Why am I getting this sentence in the food unit?

[mico12345]

Random reviews for older ones are given by duolingo.

[KonradKond8]

Aŭsralio estas kontinento kaj lando.

[JRWbqD]

Are continent names capitalized while country names aren't?

[mizinamo]

Country names are also capitalised.

Inhabitants and country-based adjectives are capitalised by some but lowercase by others. (The majority probably uses lower case: franco "a Frenchman", la angla "English (= the English language). But "Franco" and "la Angla" are also possible.)