"老师姓什么？"
Translation:What is the teacher's last name?
81 Comments
Dont foget thr apostrophe on teacher's or you will have to do it over. How stupid
288
Apostrophe = posession No apostropne = plural
There is a big difference in meaning so it is important.
- 288
Posting reformatted what i wrote. So:
Apostrophe = possession
No apostrophe = plural
You are correct but i wrote one time with the apostrophe it said wrong then i didnt and it said wrong so i am very confused x
WHat kind of school do you go to, whatever school you go to, the education for english there is not good, the apostrophe shows possession.
i agree very stupid... I was 1 point away from finishing but ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
(From a native speaker)Actually,"老" here is a symbol of reverence. ”老师“ is a single word merely meaning 'teacher' and you shouldn't construe it into two separate words. We Chinese prefer bi-character-words. Accordingly, even if “师” does mean 'teacher' by itself, we still choose “老师“ in a usual conversation. Likewise, we have words like “老虎” meaning 'tiger' and “老鹰” meaning 'eagle' in which “老“ conveys nothing.
Your comment made me realize the lessons are titled Chinese and not Chinese Simplified or more specifically Mandarin Simplified since Cantonese & many others are "Chinese" but not mutually intelligible
There is no 吗，nor 马 in the sentence.
The sentence in pīnyīn is:
- lǎoshī xìng shénme?
Nope, for example táiwān, 台湾 (simplified), 台灣 (traditional), the forms of ma like 吗, 妈, 马, 码, 蚂 all have traditional characters 嗎, 媽, 馬, 碼, 螞.
So, Is this Lao(老) the same Lao in Lao Tzu(Zi)? Meaning Lao Tzu(Zi) means Master Teacher?
It is indeed the same, but 老 actually translates to "old". Hence, Laozi (老子）actually means "Old Master".
Is the possessive always implied in a sentence like this? Aka, would 老师的姓什么 be correct, or is the 的 just not necessary?
Either use 姓xìng as a verb or a noun. (Bold below are verbs of the sentences)
As a noun: 老师的姓是什么？ (Sounds a bit awkward but still OK)
As a verb: 老师姓什么？
"姓" is a verb, so "What is the teacher surnamed?" should be accepted. "姓" equivalent to "is surnamed" is accepted in other sentences, but not here.
Come on Duo… calling me out for a freaking apostrophe? I wrote this on my phone—obviously it's a typo!
What's your old teacher's last name? Was my answer. Is that wrong? Thanks
I'm not sure. 老师 means teacher according to the hints (hover your mouse over the characters and you'll see what I mean), but according to google translate, old teacher is also 老师 so I'm not entirely sure to be honest.
The correct answer should be "What is the teacher's last name?". You've added the possessive pronoun "your" which is unnecessary because that did not exist in the Mandarin sentence. It is just "the teacher". 老师 (laoshi) is a title for teachers/masters of various kinds. I simply wrote "What's teacher's last name?" and it was accepted as correct.
It told me the translation was "what is our last name of the teacher?" which threw me off because it made no sense and I had put "what is the teacher's last name?" but I just kept getting wrong for that reason
Where does it say the translation is "what is our last name of the teacher?"?
it does. My answer was "what's your surname, teacher?" and duo gave me that weird translation.
Not confused. ..there were no words to place exactly the answer regardless of meaning. My answer was not wrong according to info presented!
What if i want to ask the "teachers" last name and not the "teacher's" ?
You mean "teachers' last names"? (There should be an apostrophe after teachers to make it possessive.)
The Chinese translation to it is 老师们姓什么
How would it be written for "what are our teacher's last names" instead of what is the teacher's last names?
老师叫什么 is what i put 8n english i swear. But is this simplified or traditional chinese.
"What's teacher's last name" was an accepted answer for me. The definite article is implied in mandarin from what I understand.
Seriously Duolingo, fix the apostrophe thing already. Most of us learn on our phones... I think our bad habits can be forgiven.
Seriously...get kver the apostrophe. Aa bad as some of these alternative translations are, seriously?
Jesus, what a joke that you need to put the apostrophe. Clearly if you type the words, you understand it.
You can find out by putting the mouse over the characters in the sentence. But just to help you out:
- 老师 - Lǎo shī - Teacher
- 姓 - Xìng - Surname
- 什么 - Shén me - What
So literally translated, 老师姓什么？would be "Teacher surname what?" which you can then translate to "What is the teacher's surname?"
Sorry for asking a really basic question, but how do you know which combination of characters forms a particular new word? For example, 老 means "old" and 师 means "division" (at least according to google translate) so how does one know that 老师 means teacher and not the individual meanings of the words (i.e. "old division")?
The characters all seem to be equidistant so I'm not seeing anything which indicates that particular characters should be combined to form a single word.
