"よるはさむいです。"
Translation:It is cold at night.
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I answered "nights are cold"...which I think is still correct since there is no plural form of words in Japanese. Does anyone have an idea why I was wrong?
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I am wondering this too but Duo doesn't like it when I comment, they just disappear into the aether.
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Above, Robi asked "can i say evening instead of night as the translation and you said no. But then you say that よる means evening.
My Japanese dictionary also defines よる as "evening/night".
Therefore I dont see why "Evenings are cold" or "Evening is cold" is not an acceptable translation for "よるはさむいです"
Please can you explain? I keep getting it wrong and it is frustrating. If my answer is valid I will report it, but if it's wrong I want to properly understand why.
Thanks!
Hi, sorry for the late reply, the problem is with english language, specifically the american english one, where "night" can mean "evening", which is less than helpful when learning the words for night and evening respectively. 夜(よる) is explicitly night-time, and this confused me as well in the above post, which in turn is why i did sperg about it elsewhere, only to get confused in it myself.
夕べ (ゆうべ) is the actual word for evening. I have fixed the above post as well, thank you for noting about this.
Addendum: There's also 晩(ばん) which is mostly encountered as parts of words, such as evening meal (aka. dinner) 晩ご飯( ばんごはん ) and the previously mentioned "this evening". As far as i have understood from asking people, it's more leaning toward the general time of the evening as opposed to "it is evening", but the nuance is the devil in the details in JP.
Extra ninja edit: While i didn't catch a native, i caught a N1 japanese speaker, this is their take: 晩 can mean night, but is mostly used to mean evening. Generally refers to the evening as a whole, including when the sun recently has set and it's still twilight. 夕方 is from when the sun is setting until there’s no more light 夕べ is almost entirely interchangeable with the above, some dialects choose not to use it to mean "evening" in general, but rather "last night". 夜 is explicitly after dark, which would be "night".
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Shouldn't "あつく" also be acceptable? I mean, it can hardly be hot and cold at the same time, can it?