"Dieses Schloss ist schön."
Translation:This castle is beautiful.
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https://www.duolingo.com/comment/1252496
This link is a detailed explanation of when to use das, dies, diese, dieser, diesen, dieses. Hope you find it helpful.
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What is with 'Schloss' vs 'Palast'? I thought the former meant 'castle' and the latter 'palace', are they interchangeable? Danke schön.
German divides things up a bit differently than English :)
"Burg" is a castle (fortified place). "Schloss" can either be a castle or a palace, but is usually less strong/defensive than a Burg, I think. "Palast" can only be a palace.
I'm not sure whether every "Palast" can be a "Schloss". Certainly not every "Burg" would be a "Schloss".
I guess that the main point of a Palast is luxury; the main point of Schloss is that nobility live there (which sometimes needs a bit of strong masonry to protect them, depending on location); and the main point of Burg is the defence.
So if an army garrison is stationed there, it won't be a Schloss but has to be a Burg, while a similar building housing a local lord instead could be a Schloss.
There's also the French loanword "Palais" but I'm not sure exactly where that fits in.
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Thanks for the detailed explanation! This type of response is one of the best parts of Duo.
So Burg is a fort Schloss is a castle and Palaise is Palace. But perhaps drawing the boundaries a little differently, but maybe not. A fort is purely military, a castle is a fortified residence and a palace is the luxurious residence.
For me, "fort" brings to mind a US military base in the Wild West, with a fairly flimsy wooden-stake wall -- certainly none of those big strong stone castle jobs you find in Europe.
That would be the pre-reform spelling, so you would be rather out of date.
You may come across that spelling, e.g. in older texts or even in newer ones written by people who grew up with the old spelling, but it doesn't correspond to the orthography currently in force.
What's wrong with "lovely"? I've used that before for "schön" and had it accepted (got tired of writing "beautiful.")
I have the same problem. It was accepted before. Does anyone else have problems with customer service? I've sent in numerous bug reports and problems and never received a reply, even though I often get an automated email saying I would!
I don't know about calling it customer service. It is not like we are paying for this service.
It's free for us because they use the community to translate documents, etc. that people pay them for. Also, the community address issues with the lessons so it's like free editing for them.
I never got an email saying that I would get a reply, but I did have a couple where they said they had made a change. I suspect that a lot of people had reported the same things. And I have reported a lot of other things that I have never had a response on. I think part of the problem is that they will fix it only on the reported exercise, but it will still exist in other exercises.
No, it is not -- it is neuter: das Schloss. (In both meanings: "castle" and "lock". Sometimes a word has two genders for two meanings, but not here.)
Why does it say that one of the translations for "Schloss" is "lock". Can I use this word for sentences like "I locked my car" or "I have a padlock"?
Yes, Schloss means not only a castle but also a lock as in the lock on a door or a padlock (which is more specifically a Vorhängeschloss).
"to lock" as in the verb is abschließen -- in the simple past tense, it looks a lot more similar to the noun, e.g. Ich schloss mein Auto ab "I locked my car". (Though you'd probably hear the compound past more often: Ich habe mein Auto abgeschlossen.)
It's not a lock as in a lock in a river, though (for ships to go up or down), or an airlock. Those are eine Schleuse (airlock: Luftschleuse).
I put down "The castle is beautiful", but Duo wants "This castle is beautiful". Those two sentences appear functionally identical to me - what's the difference?
About "schön". Way back. I learnt schön = beautiful/handsome, hübsch = pretty & nett = nice. I also got tired of typing beautiful and typed "This castle is handsome". I was wrong. I can wear that; but I got "This castle is nice" as the accepted translation. I would never translate schön as nice. Am I wrong and out of date?
"This castle is beautiful" is a good translation and is the default translation.
Additional accepted translations are unfortunately not always completely uniform across the course and may depend on the person who added them and/or on what people had suggested as alternative translations.
The equivalences you learned are good (though I would personally use gutaussehend "handsome" for a man rather than schön "beautiful"), and "nice" is not a very good translation for schön.
Calling it "the accepted translation" is misleading; it's not the only accepted translation nor the one that's considered best. It may be "an accepted translation" as sometimes the course is a bit lenient in what it accepts -- sometimes more, sometimes less.
Why is "This lock is beautiful" wrong?
That's a rather unlikely translation; you're much more likely to describe a castle as beautiful than a padlock.
But you can report your translation if you wish.
Pretty and beautiful are largely interchangeable in English. Why were both options?
Don't you just hate it when you correctly translate what you hear but you should have typed it in German. The number of times I have done that now.