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- "きょ年は何年でしたか？"
"きょ年は何年でしたか？"
Translation:What year was last year?
17 Comments
Maybe they're very picky about the word useage regarding "what" and "which"?
I hate how kyou is today but kyonen last year. Because of that parallel I always think of it as 今年/this year. But I suppose oddities like this are still better to learn than no similarities at all.
This is one of those instances where it helps a lot to know the kanji! If you can think of them in terms of how they look (and what they mean) instead of how they sound, it's harder to mess them up.
kyou = 今日 = today ("this day")
kyo = 去 = past (so, 去年, "past year," last year)
Useful phrase when you either don't know what year it is... or don't know how to deduct one...
That isn't grammatically correct. You wouldn't usually speak the sentence in that way. But if you added a comma after "last year", it would be perfectly fine.
Is this asking about the properties of last year or simply the number? I was under the assumption that it fit in with statements like 今年はいい年です。
I want to know why in this sentence year is pronounced "toshi" and not "nen"
actually 去年 should be pronounced きょねん. if the voice pronounced it as とし, it's a mistake on Duo's part.
とし is the kun'yomi for 年, meaning that it is the reading 年 takes when it's read on its own, without being conjoined to any other kanji. But because it's joined with 去 here, it takes the on'yomi, ねん, instead.
I answered "What was last year" and received an incorrect. This shouldn't be the case in English because one can ask that and generally be understood to mean "what year was last year."
