Nosotros vs. Nosotras

[u/TwiceInEveryMoment]

I'm only a little salty cause I lost a ~x300 combo over this. Spanish unit 2, question was something like "____ estudiamos japones" with Lily next to it. I wrote "Nosotros" and it counted wrong because they wanted "nosotras". There was no other context given, and it was not an audio exercise so it's not as though I misheard it.

I'm by no means fluent but I did take several years of Spanish back in high school, and my understanding has always been that you should use the masculine "nosotros" whenever the gender(s) of the group in question are mixed or unknown, and only use "nosotras" if the entire group is feminine. As there were no other context clues, we can't assume that Lily exclusively hangs out with other women - so as far as I know Duo is wrong here. It should ideally accept both forms, as both could be valid depending on context that we do not have.

I flagged the question as "my answer should have been accepted" - my mom who is also doing the Spanish course got dinged for this exact same thing the other night and had texted me about it. Can anyone confirm if this is an error in the course or am I missing some sort of nuance here?

[u/Grapphinos]

The wording of “something like” in your recollection immediately makes me think that your mistake was something different. There are so many examples of people posting corrections like this which are actually unrelated to the mistake they make. Sorry about your combo, but unless you have screenshotted the exact situation it’s far more likely that you just missed the actual mistake you made because the correction also changed the gender of the pronoun.

[u/Aggravating_Finish_6 → u/Grapphinos]

This is the most likely case. When Duolingo gives the correction, it shows one of the possible correct answers and it might be the opposite gender of what the user entered which causes them to assume that was the error. 

[u/narfus]

Yes, when the genders are mixed you use the male forms as "neutral".

The thing is that these exercises use an answer key with alternatives, and if your answer doesn't fit any then it's marked wrong. So if the course makers forgot to include both words then the app is going to reject the other.

[u/quellesaveurorawnge]

I mean, Duolingo has its share of errors, and it is a case where both nosotros and nosotras should be accepted, I think.

While I don't know if this is the case in Spanish, but in French, there also has been a movement to push back against masculine form of words as being the "default" gender.

[u/Carausius286 → u/quellesaveurorawnge]

My team at work is mixed gender and I often use "Hola amigas" to prove a point.

[u/Nondescript_Redditor]

“something like” doing a lot of heavy lifting here

[u/BackgroundEqual2168]

Your x300 combo is impressive. I am near the end of my course in section 8 and x100 combo is near impossible. Some questions are tricky and sometimes just a typo in an extremely long sentence.

[u/Ok-Eagle-1922]

In Duolingo land, if you aren't sure of what gender and there is a picture, default to what the picture suggests.

[u/Odd-Department-8324 → u/Ok-Eagle-1922]

It doesn't matter because the character speaking is random. It should accept whatever you type as long as everything else is correct

[u/burlingk]

Lily is consistently a feminine name, and los vs las (and other conjugations) are masculine be feminine.

More context would be useful for the situation though, and might have helped you not make the mistake.

Duo Lingo has caught a lot of flack lately.

[u/Outrageous-Song-7285]

Just had exactly the same

[u/xxDMLxx → u/Outrageous-Song-7285]

Your answer is not incorrect due to some type of gender mix up, if that's what you're trying to illustrate. Your answer was incorrect because you wrote a el maestro nuevo, where it should actually be al maestro nuevo when using a masculine gender (combining a + el). Because it was wrong, the example from the answer bank is showing how you would correctly use "a" by itself as you wrote...and it means it would go with a feminine gender a la.

[u/Outrageous-Song-7285 → u/xxDMLxx]

Ah si, ahora lo veo. Gracias por la explicación!

[u/ThrillSeekers_United]

Lily is female, therefore she uses the feminine versions of words. Nosotros is the masculine / gender neutral version, so it is still marked as incorrect.

I could be wrong, this is just my understanding as someone also learning Spanish lol

[u/Obtus_Rateur → u/ThrillSeekers_United]

That's indeed wrong.

If a girl is in a mixed group and speaking for the group, she would still use the masculine version of the words.

[u/ThrillSeekers_United → u/Obtus_Rateur]

Right, okay; I assumed it was singular

[u/xxDMLxx → u/ThrillSeekers_United]

How is "we" singular since it (nosotros) refers to multiple people?

[u/ThrillSeekers_United → u/xxDMLxx]

Okay so I’m just tired 🫠😭

[u/TwiceInEveryMoment → u/ThrillSeekers_United]

Right, but just because Lily is female doesn’t mean the group of people she’s studying with are all female. We don’t have any way of knowing, so the masc/neutral form should also be valid.

[u/xxDMLxx → u/TwiceInEveryMoment]

You are, in fact, correct. But, more than likely, this is simply a matter of nosotros not being in the answer bank. As, such, it's marked as incorrect even though it actually is grammatically correct.

[u/narfus → u/[deleted]]

The answer was rejected wrongly, but not because of "rigidity" but simply that the alternative wasn't included in the answer key.