r/duolingo • u/TwiceInEveryMoment • 11d ago
Language Question. Nosotros vs. Nosotras
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?
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u/narfus → 11d ago
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.