I’m learning japanese on Duolingo, it can’t go past this exercise because I can’t use “ima” to say now and it won’t let me pass this, am I missing something?

14 comments

1. It should be “Sumimasen, ima nanji desu ka” but I can’t find ima 🙁

2. Its bugged. 今 is falsely displayed with its on reading こん. The kun reading is the いま you are looking for.

3. Duolingo struggles with the different readings of Kanji. If you can, try removing the Romaji and work with the characters as they are. It will be more difficult, but you will also improve your Kanji since you won’t rely on the readings.

4. Please learn the kana and start learning kanji before using duolingo or other apps. You cant learn japanese with romaji.

5. Sumimasen, ima wa nanji desu ka?

6. Learn hirgana and katakana, its easy to learn and in invaluable

7. Sometimes it uses the wrong reading of the kanji. Whenever Duo introduces a new kanji or word I suggest looking in the discussion section to double check. Most times there’s someone there with the correct reading as well as explanations and stuff. You can also just use a dictionary.(also I suggest not relying of romanji, if you need assistance for kanji just use the furigana instead)

8. Dont waste your time on duolingo beyond hiragana katakana…

9. Learn Kanji. If you learned “ima,” you should have also learned 今. Literal first grade level stuff.

10. It’s just not a perfect app, 今 (ima) is what you are looking for, they just wrote it as another reading which is not used in this case (Kon)

    Kon is the onyomi, and would be used if the Kanji is part of a multiple kanji compund word, for example

    今 + 月 = 今月
    Ima + tsuki = kongetsu
    Now + month= this month

    すみません今何時ですか (sumimasen ima nanji desuka) is most likely what they are looking for.

11. oh my god LOL use literally any other app what on earth

12. My guess is the app wanted it to be

    すみません、何時ですか？ (Sumimasen, nanji desu ka?)

    This can be interpreted as “Excuse me, what time is it (now)?”

    The problem with apps like duolingo, at least in cases like japanese, is they expect you to make the sentences a specific way without teaching how it works, and there are a LOT o different ways to say the same thing in japanese.

    Here’s a few examples that can mean all the same sentence:

    * すみませんが、今何時ですか？
    * 何時ですか？
    * 何時は？

    The first one would be the most natural and common, but it can be shortened in different ways. If you can, I’d advise to follow along a book, or check the sub’s posts about learning for beginners, duolingo beyond the REALLY basics is not gonna help much more

13. Step いち don’t use duolingo

14. Quit using duolingo, go with memrise or renshuu