Help me understand this sentence I found on Duolingo

Question

I'm practicing my Japanese on Duolingo to prepare for the (hopefully eventual) return of Japanese tourism, and I came across a sentence that makes no sense. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

The English sentence to translate was: "There are also other things like this". The translation was: 他にもこんなものがあります.

For me, I would think this would translate would be:

他に: Usually translates as "other than"
も: "As well", or "also"
こんなもの: This type of thing
あります: Exists

So, I would translate this as "Other than (whatever it is that you are looking at), there are also other things, like this type of thing (that I'm showing you)".

The way I would read the sentence that Duolingo provided would be something like, if you're in a store, and you're looking at something, the store clerk might say, "If you are interested in that sort of thing, we also have other similar things, like these". That's not at all the feeling I get from the Japanese translation.

However, I checked with some Japanese friends and they said that this phrase can be used in both ways, and the more accurate translation is actually the Duolingo translation. Can someone explain to me why?

Answer 1

For me, there is only one possible interpretation for the Japanese sentence. こんなもの refers to other things the speaker is now directing the listener's attention to. The sentence says nothing about how similar they are to whatever they were first referencing.

他にもこんなものがあります。
Besides that, we have (things like) these.

I don't know how native speakers of English read it, but I would translate the English sentence into something like this.

There are also other things like this.
これに似たものが他にもあります。