Translation:The men are washing the fish and the women are cooking them.
In both cases the Fisch and "sie" is in the accusative case so it seems logical that sie would point to Fisch ... I suppose that's one way of telling? If sie was in the dative case (and the women are cooking WITH them/ und die Frauen kochen mit ihnen ) you'd be more inclined to think it was the men they're cooking with.
Just a theory. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You're right, if you're fishing or cooking, you gut the fish.
Except that "cleaning" fish is more than just gutting (eviscerating) them; it means doing everything to prepare the fish for cooking. Gutting, skinning or scaling, cutting the head off, rinsing. See: http://www.wikihow.com/Clean/Gut-a-Fish
It looks like the German equivalent to "clean the fish" is "zubereiten die Fische".
So if you say "Wasch die Fische," does that mean "wash the fish," that is, just rinse it in water, or does it mean "clean the fish," as shown in the wikihow article?
I also experience a logical problem using present progressive for this example: Both can't happen at same time but may be it's a problem with the german Verlaufsform that means something happens at this unique moment of speaking about. And also, the german sentence says nothing about the time when this will happen or happens, it Präsens simply, so it can mean: usually they do it, an answer to the question: "What is to be done to the poor fish?", in a historical meaning "At the stone age…" and much more (have a look at: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Präsens#Die_Verwendung_des_Präsens_in_deutscher_Sprache)
The plural of fish is normally "fish", it's what's called a zero plural noun. Fruit, sheep, deer are some other zero-plural nouns. Fishes is only used if you're talking about multiple kinds of fish: my ichthyologist friend Ellen studies the different fishes of North America. So it really shouldn't have accepted "cleans the fishes;" the plural isn't appropriate here.
I have a grammatical question. In English, there must be a comma separating these two clauses because the subject changes in the second clause (e.g. "The men [subject] are washing the fish, [comma] and the women [new subject] are cooking them.").
There is no comma in either English or German here. I assume the English is a typo, but I don't know about the German. Do any of you know if German requires a comma for coordinating conjunctions connecting two (equally) independent clauses (e.g. "Die Männer waschen die Fische, [COMMA] und die Frauen kochen sie."? Thank you!
In German, the conjunctions und and oder don’t insert a comma in front them. However contrary to what some native speakers believe, this does not mean that there never is a comma before them, just that they don’t insert one themselves. There may very well still be one for other reason. For example:
- Ich sah meinen Lehrer, Herrn Schmidt, und er sah mich auch. (I saw my teacher, Mr Schmidt, and he saw me as well.)
In this sentence there has to be a comma before und because the apposition “Herr Schmidt” needs to be separated by a comma on both sides. The presence of und doesn’t delete that comma.
No, unless you're talking about multiple kinds of fish, the plural of fish is fish. So "fishes" is very rarely used. You'd say "the boney fishes of North America" because there are many different species of boney fish. But if you're just talking about them as a group, you say "fish."
And the fewer comments you see per exercise. I think it is due to people quitting before they reach the higher levels and Duolingo not receiving as many "complants" and thus fewer translations being added to each sentence.
And lookism and speciesism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism.
I can tolerate some things, but language lessons should be enjoyable and fair to all people. Some dubious sentences are repeated over and over again, which is totally unneccesary. I cannot remember these strange sentences from my schoolbooks or other languages tapes - ever.