2 questions re: Exercise:The oldest man in the world Spanish writing exercise

Nicole P.B1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

2 questions re: Exercise:The oldest man in the world Spanish writing exercise

Hello!

1)At: https://progress.lawlessspanish.com/my-languages/spanish/exercises/overview/218

Exercise:The oldest man in the world  Spanish writing exercise

Re: Sentence: and eats a lot of fruit and vegetables.

Kwizbot                              y come mucha fruta y verdura.

You could also say:        y come mucha fruta y verduras.

I was wondering why both fruta and verdura are not plural,

2) I really like all your exercises, and do appreciate your adding "You could also say sections".  I have noticed that these (so far that I've seen) are basically

synonyms.  Are there instances where you show how the sentence could be constructed differently and still have the same meaning (syntax /word order wise).  I know that Spanish is a very pliant language that way, but I know that there are some things that are not acceptable (like any language) and find this would be helpful.  

Thank you so much for the great work that you all do!

Nicole

Asked 5 years ago
InmaNative Spanish expert teacher in Kwiziq

Hola Nicole

Thank you for your comments and your question.

In that snippet we are admitting different sentences as possible correct answers because as you say Spanish is most of the time flexible in terms of word order. In writing exercises we add the most common ways to say a sentence as long as obviously the meaning is the same (or extremely similar). In this specific snippet you mentioned about eating fruit and vegetables, in Spanish the most common translation to "and he eats a lot of fruit and vegatables" would be:

y come mucha fruta y verdura.

We tend to say this sentence using both "fruta" and "verdura" as a group, not as countable nouns.

However we also admitted the most literal translation from the English using the plural of vegetables (verduras) because it is something we could also say in Spanish. This is why we also admit:

y come mucha fruta y verduras.

However, for some reason, we wouldn't normally use here "frutas" in plural. This is why we haven't added a possible correct answer "y come muchas frutas y verduras". This would be grammatically right, of course, but not the common way to say it in this context. 

As for adding to the system all the possibilities in terms of syntax/word order we can only manually add one by one the most common and correct possible answers for each snippet. 

I hope this helps,

Saludos,

Inma

 

Nicole P.B1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Hola Inma and thank you for your reply.

I was wondering if instead of showing synonyms in the "You could also say: " sections (which we can pretty easily find online or a regular dictionary) changes in syntax /word order itself.  

I find this to be the most challenging of all, as I never know if how I am building my sentence could be constructed otherwise and still be OK.  If that would be possible, wow! or looked into as a possibility?

I realize there's no way to show all the ways, but one or two (where applicable) would be great!

Thank you again for the great work you do.  

PS: I believe you are the voice in the audios?

You sound great!

2 questions re: Exercise:The oldest man in the world Spanish writing exercise

Hello!

1)At: https://progress.lawlessspanish.com/my-languages/spanish/exercises/overview/218

Exercise:The oldest man in the world  Spanish writing exercise

Re: Sentence: and eats a lot of fruit and vegetables.

Kwizbot                              y come mucha fruta y verdura.

You could also say:        y come mucha fruta y verduras.

I was wondering why both fruta and verdura are not plural,

2) I really like all your exercises, and do appreciate your adding "You could also say sections".  I have noticed that these (so far that I've seen) are basically

synonyms.  Are there instances where you show how the sentence could be constructed differently and still have the same meaning (syntax /word order wise).  I know that Spanish is a very pliant language that way, but I know that there are some things that are not acceptable (like any language) and find this would be helpful.  

Thank you so much for the great work that you all do!

Nicole

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