"Was ist die aktuelle Uhrzeit?"
Translation:What is the current time?
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Yes, you're right. But some of my Berlin buddies would just say "Wie spaet?" Like in English some just say: "What's the time?" or even just "Time?"
I think that the point was to teach aktuelle and use it in a sentence with words that have been taught.
Many sentences that we encounter, regardless of language, are unnatural.
994
No, it shouldn't. "Aktuell" (see definition here) means "current" or "recent" and not "factual" or "real".
This may seem odd because the "actual" and "aktuell" are so similar. Here's a note about that in the Wiktionary.
I completely agree with RickrInSF. "What is the actual time?" should be accepted as that can mean current time in English (I'm a native speaker and use that phrase all the time, as well as others around me.)
You use "Wiktionary" as a reference? Nothing on that site has any real credit - it's being changed/edited from one day to the next!
"In essence, going from most reliable and thorough and narrow to most unreliable, shallow and broad; Wiktionary is a step in the middle of that route and a good choice if it's to be your one-stop resource, but not the best if you actually want to research given word.",
as described by another search engine, not that I'd trust that one either...
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As a whole, Wiktionary (and Wikipedia) are changed every minute. Any one individual article/entry is changed much less frequently. Take the entry for aktuell for example: the history for that word shows the last time it was changed was October of 2019, and the change itself was non-substantive.
You may choose to give Wiktionary and other crowd-sourced references no credit just because something can be changed by "the crowd", but that doesn't mean the entries are wrong. The weakness in crowd-sourced references is that it sometimes takes a little extra effort to determine if the entry is reliable. But that's really no different than determining if a "real" reference, like the New York Times, or other newspapers, magazines, or books are reliable. You may have noted that most papers routinely publish corrections to older articles. You may also have noticed that much of what you read in newspapers and magazines are written by non-experts who gather information from a variety of sources (not always cited) which is then published as "fact". It's not much different from the crowd-sourced references, except that when (not if) the source is misquoted or misconstrued, a crowd-sourced entry can be corrected directly by the source/expert himself, rather than relying on writers and editors who stand as gatekeepers. (What's more, most wikis carry a discussion page, so the nature of any disagreement on an article's "facts" can be observed/researched/reviewed/considered by any interested party.)
A difference is that these days, a typical Wikipedia article is monitored by many people for changes, and they are people with expertise in an area. I don't know about Wiktionary and others can speak better.
As for traditional encyclopedias, they look for experts. I once read an article written by one of those experts. He was a college professor who was considered an expert in his field, and it was for a very prominent encyclopedia. Once he submitted his work, he asked about the approval process or what sort of peer review there was. They told him that he was the expert, which is why they had him write it.
While mainstream encyclopedias have "experts" writing for them, and the experts are generally well respected in their respective fields, if anybody else reads it and finds something inaccurate, good luck trying to get it changed. I've written to mainstream encyclopedias before to point out errors, and they bend over backwards with tenuous justifications to keep what they have, despite direct evidence to the contrary.
When my kids were in school, their teachers gave them the same anti-Wikipedia rant and told them that they couldn't cite Wikipedia because "anybody could change it." I told them to use Wikipedia, and when they find something useful, look at the citations given and use those as the citations, since those are considered credible sources.
Thank you for the lecture, zengator. I'll think before questioning any of your points in the future, as yours is clearly the be all, end all point of them all, and noone else deserves to have a say, or think otherwise, when you have made a point (or so you believe).
We should all be given a verbal "slap in the face", be made to feel incredibly small and stupid, as clearly, you are the only one with any real knowledge in this forum, and you'll certainly make sure we know about it by being incredibly rude, inconsiderate and tactless in every response that you give.
PS. I'm sick of the way you put anyone down if they question anything you say. Take a long deep breath, and try to relax - you sound very wound up and frustrated. Take a break! Don't take your anger out on people who are trying to learn. We'll find someone else to ask in the future.
I'm not the only person who feels this way - MelissaMassacre made a point earlier, which I was simply agreeing with.
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Question anything I say, but bring facts and be correct. (Don't say "all" or "everyone" if really it's "some" or "a few".) I've been corrected numerous times and have acknowledged the same. I make it a point to leave my misteaks errors evident, because there's no shame in being wrong--the first time. The shame is in failing to recognize, learn, and change. Much as you've failed to acknowledge your hyperbole and overly-broad mischaracterizations.
But I certainly do appreciate your promise to think before you post. I've found that works best in presenting sound arguments.
Poor construction. In asking the time one expects to be told the current time
Zeit is the concept of time generally - time & space, as Einstein would have studied it.
Uhrzeit is the time on a device like a clock. It's a number that represents a moment, like 12 o'clock, 4:30pm or 07:15.
- 2007
I do think some of you come off as a bit rude. Where I'm from when someone asks for the time, we tend to round off to the 5 or 0. But if you're setting a clock, for example, you would say, "Is that the actual (or current) time?" meaning you want the exact time. So when some of us see the word "current" is accepted, we don't understand why "actual" isn't. To us it means the same. Not saying it does in German but that's how some of us see it in English. Some of you that answer the questions on Duolingo frequently seem to expect everyone from England, USA or Australia speak some identical form of perfect English. It comes off as snobby.
In Scotland, you often hear "What time will it be?" to which an Englishman is tempted to respond "When?"
That sort of makes sense. I guess the answer could be "all of them, if you wait long enough."
I person asking for the current time wants to know what time it is, as opposed to the time that something will occur. There would be no point asking for the actual time if somebody wants the current time because it's not as if anybody would ask for the wrong time, or anybody would expect that it's fine to give a wrong answer if the person doesn't say "actual."
I might ask for the actual time if I'm talking about some sort of event for which the scheduled time isn't accurate, such as for a concert with an opening act that I plan to skip.
What's the difference between what's the time? and what's the current time. Surely, current is superfluous ?
It translate die aktuelle Uhrzeit, which is also a bit more specific than the bare minimum necessary.
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Since Uhrzeit is feminine and there is an article (die), should it not be aktuellen? From the lesson notes: 2) Feminine and Plural end in -e. If you add an article, you also have to add an -n.
The problem is that it makes little sense. In general, even asking for the current time makes little sense, unless it's the current time as opposed to some other time. I could say that the train leaves at eight o'clock and the current time is seven o'clock, because without "current" is might not be clear what time I'm talking about.
But if you want to know the time, it's always the time at the moment. 'Current time' tells you which time, (current as opposed to the time of something else) but "at the moment" refers to when, not what. You wouldn't ask what time it will be a moment from now. You wouldn't ask what time it will be at 9 o'clock. It makes no sense to ask about the time at another moment. It's always the time at the moment, unless you are talking about the time of something else.
Asking for the time or for the current time implies that the person wants the correct time, and it's not likely that anybody would want the incorrect time. Asking for the current time makes it clear that the person isn't asking for the time of an event or something else. Thus it's in common use. There might be cases where a person asks for the correct time, such as when he finds out that he has the incorrect time. But it's not something that would generally be used to ask for the current time.
What about using hour instead of time? I've heard plenty of instances (some spoken by myself included) where hour was used as a general stand-in for time
Is this right or am I using it wrong?
It's not used that way. It is used in some expressions. "At this hour..." would mean "at this time." But "What is the current hour" would not be a clear way of asking for the time. If it's 3:15, the current hour would be a confusing thing to ask for. If you are taking a three hour test, or entering a room where there's a three hour presentation with different material scheduled for each hour, and the group is an hour and 20 minutes into it, you might ask for the current hour in that context and be told that it's the second hour.
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When you play the audio on slow, it sounds like the speaker is crying when he says "Uhrzeit." Not sure why this happens, but it's unintentionally hilarious.