These are all non-gendered nouns. Therefore, they do not require el/la before the noun for the sake of testing on Memrise, BUT they should all accept el/la before the noun. In fact, I just checked, and all of the examples you gave accept articles of either gender, so if you submitted an answer that was marked incorrectly, it’s probably for a reason other than the article (or lack thereof) that you used when typing out the answer.
If you experience this problem again, please take a screenshot so that I can see what the deal is.
I know they can be both. I used them with la automatically. I’ll take a screenshot next time.
Is there a major difference between el mesero and el camarero? The latter was incorrect for waiter
Looks like it’s primarily a Latin America vs Spain difference. I updated the definition to read “waiter (not c…)” to clarify that the answer is el mesero/la mesera. Duolingo teaches it as mesero, so that’s what I’m including in the course. Thanks for bringing the other word to my attention though! I appreciate it.
Hi! Can you please add your username into Short description box, so I would see who is the creator inside the app without visiting website.
I reviewed some words and in type test got: how much/how many… typed in cuántos… it was incorrect.
How much = cuánto, cuánta;
How many = cuántos, cuántas
This “how many” in your question is quite confusing
(For everyone else who’s reading it: if you have created a course please add your username into small description box, for example @Atikker, so app users will know who made that course)
@zstoltz I’ve decided to ignore all the words that have (not --) after them.
On level 5 you have gato listed as male, but not any of the other animals that also have male/female words. For example conejo/coneja, perro/perra, elefante/elefanta, caballo/yegua, león/leona etc…
If I type in pavo or ajo (exactly the audio) it is considered incorrect. I have to type el pavo, el ajo for it to be correct.
So what are you going to do? Disable audiomode? Add pavo & ajo as alternatives?
If I type what I hear I will always get it wrong.
Thank you!
Ps! Thanks again for adding username in short description area, it was so easy find you now (I have several Spanish courses, really hard to remember who is the author of which course)
I actually don’t have audio mode enabled in the main course. I think that’s mobile app “feature” that is unfortunately not in line with the web app. I don’t know how that I am able to make that change on the course creator side. You might have to disable that within the app for yourself. I’m really not sure. Maybe you can check with someone at Memrise to see if there’s anything to be done? @Lien, do you have any thoughts on this?
I just had el caballo and la araña in review (with articles in audio). The simplest would just to change the audio from ajo to el ajo and pavo -> el pavo, wouldn’t it? I think most of your nouns have articles in audio.
In modern usage in most of Latin America, except for the countries around the Río de la Plata, bebé or even bebe (without tilde), is of common gender, so there it is correct to say either el bebé or la bebé.
Since this course is supposed to be about Latin American Spanish, it’s probably best to accept the alternative la bebé.
This is different from the usage in Spain, where it is always of fixed masculine gender, and el bebé is used to refer to babies of both sexes.
I moved cocinar from the later level it was in to Food 1. Thanks for noticing that. I don’t think it was in that level on Duolingo before the update. I won’t add all the tenses though since that’s more of a grammatical thing, and this course is primarily focused on vocabulary.
