"九点差一刻。"
Translation:A quarter to nine.
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The article isn't required in British English. "A quarter to nine" is very unnatural for me
@Monsieur - it is equally unnatural for many others to say "Quarter to nine". They want "Quarter to"; as Nine is already known etc... My view is that I'm here to learn Chinese. Not English.
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Yes, 'a quarter to...' is commonly used in the UK,often if one wants to confirm times with another person. Eg. ' I'll meet you at a quarter to 9'...'Great,we will see you there at a quarter to 9 !' Though both ways both are OK. Its all rather nuanced and probably not worth losing any sleep over.
my native language is Dutch and we say 'quarter to...' so for me there's nothing wrong with it. Plus I believe some English speaking folks also use it. Still, it's not always about translating it correctly, I already think Duolingo focusses too much and too often on getting a grammatically correct answer in (American) English. That's all fun but that doesn't teach you the literal meaning of the Chinese sentence, which is very important if you want to truly understand this language.
The major flaw of this program is the lack of flexibility in English. When they take a heart just go and do practice. The reward is experience points and hearts. And, practice is good for you. Do the hard practice when offered.
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Articles (in English) are a, an and the. There's no article needed in this phrase though!
It sounds verbose and robotic. No native speaker would ever use it. It would be like never using contractions.
I'm from New York and we say "a quarter to...". I see nothing wrong with that.
In American English we do say "quarter to nine" or "quarter to four" etc. Often we just say literally "Quarter to." and leave the rest as assumed.
- 1747
A literal translation of the first is "nine awaiting a segment" (imagine the clock face as a pie with four equal segments) its used obviously here to tell the time i.e. "a quarter to nine". Rearranging the Chinede to form your second combination you get "awaiting segment nine o'clock" Chinese works with implied articles and context and a native speaker will add in implied words until it makes sense. So here it would imply "in a quarter of an hour it will be nine o'clock".
"15 minutes to 9 o'clock" carries the same meaning, doesn't it?
Also, where I'm from, "a quarter to nine" is rarely ever used in conversation.
DL please, can you fix the 'a quarter'?! The article doesn't belong there!
Because "(a) quarter to nine" would be 8:45; but even so we're leaning about "一刻" and "差" here so I think "quarter to" is better.
Neither "til" nor "till" should be used with this time expression. It is "(a) quarter to".
As a preposition, "till" is synonymous with "to;" as a conjunction, "till" is synonymous with "until" (but is not a shortened version of "until," as "till" was already a word in its own right for several centuries before "until" became a word). "A quarter to nine" and "a quarter till nine" are synonymous, and both phrases are correct.
In this sense of the word, "til" (without an apostrophe) is a variant spelling of "till;" as such, "a quarter til nine" is correct as long as "til" is an acceptable variant spelling of "till," but some people regard "til" as an incorrect spelling rather than a variant spelling.
"'Til," with an apostrophe, is indeed a shortened version of "until," but that's a different word with a different history, and yes, some writers drop the apostrophe, even when using "til" in its much more recent sense of a so-called "poetic abbreviation" of "until."
My answer: Fifteen minutes before nine. ...which I think is correct. (American English)
Let's all just agree that it is wrong because nobody says that (at least not in Australia).
Is this an English course? All of these variations should just be accepted so that the user can move on.
Exactly. This is not an English course so let's not expect that all 27,347 variants will show up here. Let's pick the most common way to say this in English to prove we've understood the Chinese; and move on.
Else we'll be here till next Christmas debating 'quarter to nine, 'quarter of nine', 'eight forty five pm', 'eight forty five am', 'sixteen hundred forty five hours', 'fifteen minutes to nine in the morning', 'fifteen minutes to nine in the evening', 'five minutes past eight forty in the morning', and two dozen thousand other grammatical gems because we are trying to learn Chinese? Eh?
The issue is that the Duo computer has to be given all possible answers that are to be accepted. Duo is only going to put standard English and common variations of standard English in the list of correct answers. They are not going to include answers that are clearly wrong in the list and cannot put all possible answers that nobody usually says in the list as well, both because there is no limit to the length of such a list and because they will not have thought of such answers as possibilities. If you think "one quarter to nine" should be accepted there used to be a tick box in the Report option that allows you to say that and Duo will then decide if they agree, but there is not one that I can see for this exercise, so it seems that something approximating correct English is the only thing that will get your answer accepted.
How have they still not fixed this??? "Quarter to nine" without the "a" is perfectly correct. It sounds so unconfortable to put the "a", I always forget it on here...
This was a spoken chinese phrase which asked for the characters. I have them the characters 九点差一刻。i was marked correct but the translation it provided was "They will be back in one hour"
i'm confused. they said that the meaning for cha is worse. so why is it included in a sentence that translates to a quarter to nine?
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My understanding (possibly wrong) is that 差 is also "lack," and the role it plays here is like "menos" in Spanish, i.e. "nueve menos quince," or something like "it's lacking fifteen minutes to be nine o'clock." Very awkward in English, of course, but it works in Spanish or Chinese.
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Many Chinese characters can have multiple meanings depending on the context. The dictionary hints don't always show every meaning that a character might have. When it comes to time, it might help to think of 差 as "less than" or "minus".
"9:00 minus a quarter (0:15) " = 8:45
"a quarter less than 9:00" = 8:45
"It's a quarter to 9:00" = 8:45
"It's 8:45" = "It's 15 more minutes until 9:00" = "It's a quarter to 9:00"
@Shantel - "Up" means above. Then why is Up included in "Make up"? Or in "Catch up"? No one climbs a ladder while applying lipstick or meeting with friends.. :-)
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I got correct on 9.45 and it says another translation is a quarter to nine. Which would be 8 45
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why does this example have the hour first and then the minutes to the hour, when another example had it the opposite way?
If you were taking the trouble to write the time including :00, you could perhaps have said 8:45. Thoughts?
- 462
I can try 8:45 next time and see if it works. The app accepted "A quarter to 9", but not "A quarter to 9:00".
If we feel that a quarter to 9:00 = 8:45, then a quarter to 8:45 = 8:30?
Thoughts?
So perhaps that is the reason Duo doesn't accept it either - coz they haven't heard anyone say it like that either :-)
- 630
It accepts "till" but not "til"? Both are informal. And it seems the "a" is still required.
I think It's not right to say "A quarter to nine" I hope someone will check and fix this soon.
- 870
It is right to say either "A quarter to nine" or "Quarter to nine". Both are perfectly natural and common ways to say it where I grew up in Australia.
It is perfectly correct to say that. In fact it is probably the most common way to say it in Australia. It can also be abbreviated to "quarter to nine", which is also commonly used.
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You do not need an article here. I'm a native speaker and I had never heard 'a quarter to' before I came across it in an ESL text in China.
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I have a correct answer and it is marked wrong. This is now happening every time I have to deal with "Tap What You Know"
All languages appear weird before you master them. That's quite normal.