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- "他几岁？"
"他几岁？"
Translation:How old is he?
28 Comments
245
Our Chinese teacher told us that you'd ask this politely only of little children who are less than 10 years old. If the person in question is presumably older than that, you'd ask 多少歳(sui4). If you ask ji3sui4 from older people, it's like saying you're a big kid.
Character by character, going by the tips, this reads "he/him + how many/a few/some + years old", which made me curious about how the second character works: can it be both a statement (a few/some) AND a question (how many)? How to tell when it is which, and are there other usage notes for it?
"Ji" is a question word used for asking dates and age etc. However, our Chinese teacher had told us that correct usage is "ji sui le?" In answer, you replace "ji3" with actual age, i.e. sanshi (30) sui le.
The only way to tell which is which is through contezt and tone (questioning tone raises pitch at end)
as someone who's minoring in chinese at university, and so now only uses duolingo as supplementary work, i've come to realise just how poor a lot of these are - you'd more commonly use 他/她/你多大, as 他几岁 is more appropriate when asking a small child (less than 10 years old)
How are we supposed to know which form of "ta" it is from just the audio???
You aren't supposed to know since it's impossible without context. Use the male form 他 when in doubt. Most input methods default to it, which makes it convenient and easy to remember.
A few people have pointed it out, but the wording here is that which would be used with a small child
You can say it, but normally you would just say "how old is he" if you were just asking how old someone was. However your sentence could be used and even though it is an unusual way to say it, it would be OK.
If you were asking someone to read somebody else's age from a field on a form or screen then you might ask "what's his age" in preference to "how old is he" because you are making a reference to a specific field on the form for "age".
Incorrect for using 她 on audio! Why don't the authors listen to us and fix this stuff? Have they just left this program to rot?
Yup, 你多大了 also works. Since 几 also means "few" you only use it when asking for small quantities, like a children's age (up to 10). Asking a grown-up 你几岁 would be considered impolite.
Same as usual, 她几岁 should be accepted. It doesn't let me report it as "my answer should be accepted", so I reported "the suggested solution is unnatural or has an error".
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how are we supposed to know the difference between 她 and 他 in a hearing exercise my god
You know, if you're using the keyboard entry method for typing Chinese from what you hear, 她 should be an acceptable response for this item.
is there any different between she/he in Chinese? I reckon that they was not any..
They are pronounced the same. From what I've read, they used to be the same word with the same character, but they decided to use different characters when they learned that European languages have different words for he/him and she/her.
That's only used in a certain context. You'd say something like that if you heard someone's age and were surprised by it. Like you see someone who looks 30, and someone tells you he's actually 50, and you would say in surprise, "He's HOW old???" But you wouldn't say that as a neutral question.
