"Is this your Chinese teacher?"
Translation:这是你的汉语老师吗？
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Can't we also write 中文 instead of 汉语?I was using the keyboard and not the word bank.
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I think 中文 is also acceptable, especially outside mainland China and putonghua courses.
Better yet 普通话/Pǔtōnghuà (because "Chinese" is actually a group of related languages, like the Romance languages in Europe, and not a single language - linguists call the language family "Sinitic" - the language you're learning is Mandarin)
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especially since han yu literally means language of the han (the majority ethnic group in china) yet nowadays the han make up around 90 percent of china or something like that so i prefer to use 中文 or 普通话
Good observation: in the English sentence, "Is this your Chinese teacher?" the word "Chinese" could refer either to nationality or to language, that is, either to a teacher (of any subject) who is Chinese, or to a teacher (of any nationality) who teaches the Chinese language.
However, this Chinese sentence, 这是你的汉语老师吗, does not share that ambiguity, as 汉语 refers to the Chinese language only, rather than to the nation; the 语 part indicates "language."
The question is wrong. In Chinese it is "这是你的中文老师吗" implying that you ask about a Chinese teacher. If you want to ask about a teacher who teaches Chinese you should ask "Is this your teacher of Chinese?"
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I don't know if it is "wrong," but it sounds funny. There is no need for 的 here. Also, you are using the old style of writing, which is used in Taiwan, but not Mainland China.
On reflection, the original answer (by Duolingo) is a bit rude. Shouldn't it be 他是你的中文老师吗？A person is not an it.
Yeah ive heard from native speakers saying 这 (it) when referring to people is super rude... like 这是谁 when talking about a person isthe equivalent of saying "who the hell is this??"
Zhe is used in some Chinese textbooks. It is just you who and the prejudice that you have that makes zhe rude.
I know you have 2 crowns in Japanese and 4 in Russian, and therefore are somewhat used to languages that are highly declined, but PLEASE don't put the genitive marker places that it doesn't have to go. Mandarin is AGGLUTINATIVE. That means you don't have to stick 的/の/-ος/-ы everywhere if it's obvious that two words should stick together as one unit.
I think you use ge only when you are counting something. Because it is a measure word.
i read another comment where it said you use 这个 when its folowed by a noun (i.e. youre saying this/that person does something) but only 这 when it is followed by a verb (e.g. this question).
Was taking this to refresh my chinese after not speaking it for years. We tend to say 华文 instead of 汉语 here in Singapore
When referring to a school subject, we tend to use 语文 instead of 汉语。Though it's a bit complicated. Basically 语文 covers both language, literature, historical, and political education, with an early focus on language that morphs into literature as children progress through the school system, with a healthy dose of nationalist history and politics sprinkled in at all ages.
So I guess if you hear it from a Chinese person talking about a course he/she took in China, it's 语文。If it's about a language course for L2 speakers, though, it probably means 中文/汉语/华语/普通话。
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This depends on the country. In Singapore, it is huayu. In New Zealand, the Mainlanders use Guoyu (literally language of my country).
you have to add the 吗 in questions no matter what, correct? i'm kind of assuming that without it, it'd sound like a doubtful/shock thing if it still was spoken with a question tone (this essentially becoming "THIS is your chinese teacher?")
well later we learn (verb)不(verb) for yes/no questions... and there's too much tonage for "asking in a question way" to seem possible ... so just take this as a heads up ig :p
Putting 吗 at the end of a statement turns that statement into a yes/no question (asking if that statement is true or not).
Quite often, I am marked "wrong" when I write my characters using the gboard, or other pinyin keyboard's, even though my characters and syntax is exactly the same as the "correction". "They" seem to be discouraging the use of pinyin, which is the real way to learn to write Chinese, the way the Chinese do it. Using pinyin also helps to learn Chinese much faster. So then I have to use their character tiles, to be given credit for the answer. I don't know why this is, and why they don't show the pinyin pronunciations generally, in small type, above the characters, like most Chinese courses. Are "they" trying to make people more dependent on this course to learn Chinese by discouraging pinyin?
I thought this sentence ment the teacher was Chinese not that he teaches Chinese.
I thought I had to add "zhongwen" before "laoshi" like this: Zhè shì nǐ de zhōngwén lǎoshī ma
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Is there not an ambiguity in the English that is not present in the Chinese? English does not distinguish whether the teacher is Chinese or is a teacher of Chinese.
I put in the correct answer and the response was that it was wrong. Strange!