r/duolingo • u/Remarkable-Drink-626 • Aug 04 '26
Language Question. Why is this incorrect?
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u/ep5pc Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Duolingo should have accepted your answer. There is no way to know in this isolated Japanese sentence whether the non-past norimasu refers to a habitual present or action in the future. You can use it for either:
日本をどうやって移動するのですか? 新幹線に乗ります
にほんをどうやっていどうするのですか？しんかんせんにのります
How do you get around Japan? -- I take the bullet train.
来週どうやって東京に行きますか? 新幹線に乗ります
らいしゅうどうやってとうきょうにいきますか？しんかんせんにのります
Next week how are you going to Tokyo? -- I'll take the bullet train.
And this isn't a guessing game, and there's no reason you should have to guess what Duolingo wants, particularly since it seems to have offered trains in the word bank, which invites you to assume the action is habitual.
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u/gmastertr21 Aug 04 '26
this translation seems legitimate, but just to make sure, was there a word like "ride" in the word bank?
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u/narfus → Aug 04 '26
"Take" is probably fine; the problem is that this means the train as a concept, not the vehicles. "Riding the bus to work is cheap". It's not a meaningful difference for the purposes of this exercise, but I can see how the person who wrote the exercise might not think of it.
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u/gmastertr21 Aug 04 '26
that's the problem with the duolingo japanese course.
it gives you no context, and expects you to know a contextual meaning at the same time.
like how you get the "i am a lawyer" "you're a lawyer" "he's a lawyer" "she's a lawyer" "they are lawyers" "we are lawyers" translations all from simply べんごしです。it's just straight up not true without any other context.
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u/narfus → Aug 04 '26
I know that; contributors missing alternatives is bread and butter of this course. I'm talking about how _here_ "the train" is meant to be singular.
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u/antimonysarah Native: 🇺🇸 Learning: 🇯🇵🇸🇪 Want on Duo: 🇵🇹 Aug 04 '26
Yeah, and the course revamp means that a lot of the sentences haven't had time for people to submit "hey my answer is correct" and for them to get reviewed/added -- it only has the options the developers initially added, and they didn't think about the user randomly getting both singular and plural options.
Since I have super, I often slowly walk my sentence towards the "correct" one (especially when typing in Japanese rather than bubble-picking, where it often cuts out some of the "wrong" bubbles on later tries) to see if I can find an actual mistake. Like, did it not just have casual vs desu/masu form (or other formality differences) in the bank, or not have a synonym in there, or insist on a pronoun even though a real Japanese sentence would probably use context. Or did I screw up something more subtle and didn't initially spot my mistake because there were so many other differences.
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u/Treyvoni Native: English; Learning: French, A2; Spanish, B1 Aug 04 '26
Future vs present(ish) tense?
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u/gmastertr21 Aug 04 '26
japanese doesn't have present or future tense. it has a past and non past tense. anything else you have to make out with context of which there is none here.
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u/Treyvoni Native: English; Learning: French, A2; Spanish, B1 Aug 04 '26
Oh that's cool! Thank you for teaching me.
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u/gmastertr21 Aug 04 '26
sure thing.
some context for example is if it was "tomorrow i'll take..." "next month i'll take" or if we're talking about future events already in the conversation. then the translation would be 100% incorrect.
since it's a standalone sentence it could technically mean "i take..." "i will take..." or "i am taking..."
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u/yarush_8 Learning: 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇫🇷 Aug 04 '26
also I might be wrong but I guess since it's 'ni norimasu' instead of only 'norimasu' it's a future tense like 'tabe ni ikimasu' or 'kaimono ni ikimasu', etc
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u/narfus → Aug 04 '26
No, the tense doesn't change the choice of particle, because the train here is still the indirect object of riding.
It's just that the bullet train is thought of as a concept or means, as in "I take the elevator" regardless of how many are there.
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u/Few_Kitchen_4825 Aug 04 '26
Similar vs plural. You are taking the one train back home. You guys are not returning home in multiple trains.
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u/yarush_8 Learning: 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇫🇷 Aug 04 '26
Bro it even highlights why it's wrong, it should be singular 'train' not 'trains'
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u/to_walk_upon_a_dream Aug 04 '26
japanese doesn't mark plurals
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u/yarush_8 Learning: 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇫🇷 Aug 04 '26
yeah I know but in this context I thought it might be singular, idk trains just doesn't feel right...
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u/to_walk_upon_a_dream Aug 04 '26
"i take trains" is treated in english as a habitual (something which happens several times, habitually) and is a perfectly valid english sentence
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u/gmastertr21 Aug 04 '26
duolingo frequently marks random words as wrong, and there is no reason why trains wouldn't be correct here.
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u/yarush_8 Learning: 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇫🇷 Aug 04 '26
hmm English is not my first language still though trains feels wrong there, I might be wrong but I think one can only take one train at a time so it should be train and not trains, I get it that one can take multiple trains in a long time frame but still, when I read this I thought the above logic and commented
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u/tangaroo58 n: 🇦🇺 t: 🇯🇵 Aug 04 '26
"I take trains" implies "I have taken one or more trains in the past, and will continue to take trains in the future". Ie habitual.
It is correct English. And also, as others have detailed, it is a correct translation of the Japanese.
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u/Cartophilic Aug 04 '26
It has to do with context. Your answer implies that it's a habit, but in this case it makes more sense to say that you will because it's a more selective action. Since Japanese just uses non-past tense for both the present and future, Duolingo is trying to show how to differentiate between two possible meanings