- Forum >
- Topic: Chinese >
- "昨天的雪很大，我们都没有上班。"
"昨天的雪很大，我们都没有上班。"
Translation:The snow was heavy yesterday, we both did not go to work.
108 Comments
我们都= we all, but was marked wrong and corrected to "we did not go to work" instead of "we all did not go to work" both sentences should be acceptable in their consideration.
Agreed. There's not enough context provided to help decide if there are two people or more.
I wrote 'we did not go to work' and it was turned down. Might it be that someone reported the sentence from a desktop version of the app withouot a specification what was wrong, the person updating it didn't know how to update and in the end made it even worse? :(
759
Yes but the preceding statement gives no indication that there are only two people (we BOTH) being spoken about in the subject of the following sentence.
All that proves is that context matters. Without context, it is impossible to say whether it means "both" or "all" here. Both answers ought to be correct.
I have reported this, as this sentence is a mess. :-)
"The snow was heavy yesterday. We both did not go to work."
The use of 'both' is completely unnecessary; "We did not go to work" is fine). It is also grammatically not quite right, as when used in a negative phrase, it is better to use 'neither' ("neither of us went to work").
But as some of the other comments rightly say, the original sentence makes no mention of the number of people, so there is no context in which to assume that two people are present. I could be wrong, but I think to imply that two people were present, you would need to say "我们两个都没有上班。"
I was going to say the same thing, that it is gramatically incorrect to say "We both did not go to work." It should be, "Neither of us went to work". Also, it is unclear if two people or more than two people are being referenced--so the translation "None of us went to work" is also possible.
More idiomatic that "we both did not go", is "neither of us went".
"Yesterday's snow was very heavy. We all didn't go to work" should be the corrected answer. It can't be "both," as nowhere in the question states the number of people being talked about.
Also: "Yesterday it snowed very heavily. None of us went to work" should be accepted.
Yes, I agree. Sometimes it appears that the original text is in Chinese with a automatic translation.
- 169
It's just proof that automatic translation and people who are not true bilinguals tend to translate similarly.
我们两个都 = "We both...."
Without 两个， “我们都 simply refers to "We all" or "None of us".
我们都 = "we both" or "we all". Thank you for providing the nuance in understanding the language.
Yep . . . Sigh . . . I feel it's sort of not-very-good-news when learners correct the target language grammar or syntax . . . .
- 169
The course should still be in beta. And it should really tell the users that they're providing all the missing answers when they use it in beta. And they should check and add all our correct suggested missing answers we contribute.
Agreed. I was wondering how many people referring to "We" in this sentence.
We all didn't would be very poor English: "None of us" or "neither of us", depending on context (which we didn't have)
- 169
No. It would be slightly poor English at worst. There's far worse English elsewhere in the course.
So, poor English isn't poor if it could be worse...
This is a language learning site; I hope the Chinese isn't as poor as the English.
- 169
Unfortunately from reading these comments for a year and a half or more it seems the Chinese and the English are roughly as poor here. But slowly improving.
- 169
It should be one of the accepted answers. It shouldn't be "the" answer though as it's not necessarily the most natural way to say it in English.
It isn't said that the number of people is > 2 neither, and if it equals 2, you clearly wouldn't say "we all" instead of "both of us"? I mean what you say is "we don't know how many people there are, but it's definitely more than two" - how do you know that?
"我们都" is a bit ambiguous - I don't think it necessarily refers to just two people. Also "Yesterday's snow" is fine. Anyway, reported.
- 913
Weather II is simply the worst and most inconsistent lesson so far in Chinese. In the end I had nine tabs open with the "correct" version to copy from. Many other perfectly good English answers - in many cases, much better and more natural sounding, are excluded. This is an exercise in remembering a strange English sentence, more than a test of Chinese comprehension.
I had six tabs open in the end. I think this number would be larger than my average in the past.
- 654
For people arguing that 都 can't mean 'both' but only 'all' it's worth noting that (as far as I know) 'both' in English is a holdover from Indo-European grammar, which distinguished three grammatical numbers: singular, dual and plural. English no longer has a dual number, except in these sort of fossilised expressions both and neither. Chinese on the other hand doesn't even have grammatical number. To expect it to have an exact equivalent for the words all, both, none and neither is absurd. 都 I believe refers to a collective larger than one. In English that could be all or both (or in a negative sentence neither or none). Clearly both alternatives should be accepted.
都 can be both or all. Was this written by a computer? 我们都没有 should be translated as , none of us or neither of us, it would be bad English to day 'we both didn't"
For the first part, "yesterday it snowed a lot" is both literal and colloquial and it should be accepted. As everybody says, the "both" in the second part is terrible
I wrote :yesterday the snow was heavy, neither of us went to work, which was marked as wrong.. Please, the grammar inflexibility on these lessons is increasingly straining.
- 1032
If you want to sound like a native English speaker, do not use "both / did not" here, use "neither of us / did." (Does Duoling have native speakers checking these things?)
- 130
I'd argue that "yesterday it snowed very heavily" is also a construction which should be accepted.
For "昨天的雪很大,“ "it was snowing hard yesterday" should be an acceptable response, For "我們都沒有上班," "我們都" means "we all" moreso and should be accepted as a response
Awkward translation. What about "The snow was heavy yesterday, neither of us went to work", or "It snowed so hard yesterday that none of us went to work"?
INCONSISTENT!!!!!!!!! please change your bot's DB! That translation is plain incorrect, from the Chinese sentence we are given to work with.
我们都 = A. in a positive sentence = "We all..."; B. In a negative sentence = "None of us . . . "
If you really want to indicate that 我们 is actually two people, then your sentence in CHINESE ought to reflect that, i.e.,
我们两个都。 We both 。 。 。
他们两个都 = They both 。 。 。(他们都 = They all....)
Any idea how to accelerate the corrections here?
- 169
I doubt there's any bot behind it. My guess is some native Chinese speakers with okayish English and some native English speakers with okayish Chinese and no fully bilingual contributors in both who do all this work and don't get paid very well for it.
I would agree with earlier comments that it would also be correct to say "Yesterday's snow was very heavy"
- 169
Both are equally correct since there is no context. For "all" to be "more correct" we would need to know 我们 refers to three or more people.
It gets tiresome to translate the exact sense of the sentence and have the answer come back to me as if I was wrong, even if the same words were in a different order. 'It snowed heavily yesterday, so we didn't go to work' could also be 'Yesterday it snowed heavily. We didn't go to work' As written above, it would be more correct to start with "The snowfall was heavy yesterday."
It gets really annoying to translate correctly and have it marked wrong. "It snowed heavily yesterday" is more accurate than "the snow was heavy yesterday." "Women" means "we," an indefinite number, the "dou" added to mean only the totality of the "we."
Yesterday the snow was heavy or The snow was heavy yesterday. I think they are both right!!!
I literally copied and pasted the 'correct' answer after getting sick of trying to memorize the precise phrasing. Duolingo Mandarin is a mess.
- 169
Lots of variations still missing as accepted answers for this whole part of the course. In this case "Yesterday was very snowy. None of us went to work".
I know that it's not unusual for western students to have difficulty with hearing/saying tones correctly and I'm sure it's true for me too. Still, it's often very difficult to hear the critical sound/tone distinctions I expect from the text. I find myself leaning much more heavily on the written characters, which after four levels of pinyin only courses when I was younger...is pretty much the opposite of what I expected. I feel the pronunciation exercises would benefit from finer granularity comparisons at the least.
I wish that when the speakers speak, that pronounce the Chinese words properly.
Again, duolingo insists on an awkward and unnatural sounding phrase. I said "neither of us went to work" which was the most natural way to say it, but they insist on the tortured "we both did not go to work"
"Yesterday it snowed a lot, we did not go to work" wasn't accepted. I guess there are just too many ways to say this sentence in English.
We both did not!? 1. Nothing to show it's only two people here. 2. In correct English we would say " neither of us" / "none of us" went to work. I seem to spend more time trying to remember / typing in garbled "correct" solutions than actually learning Chinese. Please speed up the fixes.
Same here. It disturbs learning unbearably when you use more focus on remembering the exact, often unnatural or wrong, translations that DL requires, than on the actual sentences and structures that you are supposed to learn.
- 169
Every language learning app and website I've ever used has a version of this same problem.
In theory, Duolingo has this covered since we can submit missing correct answers. In practice though, and especially in this unit, the system is failing.
Warning this site will drive you nuts!! Sometimes the character for all/both they mark you wrong if you use "all" and then on another question they want "both" crazy. You'll see.
1.The first sentence or clause gives the reason for the second but the suggested translation fails to convey this completely. It requires some sort of connective to convey that idea. 2. As many have said "我们都没有上班。" doesn't make it clear that the subject refers to only two people - to convey that you'd have to use something like "我们都两..." 3. in either case the English used is weird. If it refers to two, English speakers would normally say "neither of us went to work" or for more people, "neither of us went to work."
- 444
This sentence is not valid in Norway. We are used to snow, and go to work even if there is much snow. Some time we get too late to work...
- 454
There is no indication there are only TWO people. In this context then it is assumed there are more than one person. Therefore 'We did not go to work' is the correct answer.
No way to [Report] this poor translation into English so I just checked every box in the [Report] menu.
- 336
The answer options do not include all the words you need to give a correct answer!!! :-(
As a native English speaker and beginner Chinese student, I find myself in the truely bizarre situation of criticizing the Chinese. Surely, if there are only two people "duo" is at best an unnecessary redundancy that might only be excused for imphasis ...in which case "neither" or "none" would seemed preferred translations, with "we" being the always acceptable but less flavored word. However, No Contextual Indication Of Two People wrecks this exercise as provided.
By the way, my comment is in the context of getting it right the first time because "both" in the word bubbles was the only way I could see to honor the use of "duo", but w/out word bubbles I would never have gotten it correct.
Mmm... I don't have a big problem with "heavy" vs "light" snow as it seems to be a frequently used native English/American term in areas that regularly get significant accumulation, like ski resorts or many mountains in general. The reference seems to be for resulting accumulation, which can literally be tons or relative size/speed/frequency of flakes as a very rough predictor of accumulation.
- 169
Snow which has already fallen can get deep on the ground, snow which is falling in large amounts is heavy. Snow does not need to be heavy for it to end up deep on the ground. Light snow falling for a long time will also end up deep.
Please delete this or aleast chose better phasing, the english is all over the place.
- 280
This so stupid!!! The meaning of the sentence is so obvious!!! There is no need for such inflexibility!!
"We both" is not necessary, it's redundant. "We" is enough. Responses should not be marked wrong if user responds "we did not go to work".
We English speakers fuss and fume because we know many ways of saying the same thing. I don't know that Chinese writers have the same capacity. Maybe if I learn to read basic Chinese better, I will discover there are the same sorts of things wrapped up in four-character idioms. Meantime, I struggle with the same stuff.
Couldn't "It snowed very heavy yesterday, we did not go to work" as in English it's implied that it was a past tense.
I write: "It was heavy snow yesterday, we all were not go to work" Anyone can tell me why it's not be accepted?
Although the Duolingo answer for this is a bit awkward and suffers from poor punctuation (the comma should be a semi-colon, a common error in Duo's Chinese), it is grammatically acceptable. Your answer is ungrammatical. Your sentence would be grammitical if you change it to read "It was snowing heavily yesterday; we all did not go to work." It is still a bit awkward, however. I don't know if Duo accepts that answer either, but it should. "Were" is the past tense of "are", and we similarily do not say "We are go to work today," but instead, "We are going to work today." This sentence also could not use "We all were not going to work," because that construction is the so-called "future in the past"; it refers to the future from a reference point some time in the past.
Aww, i forgot about that. So in the first clause, what if i write "It was a heavy snow yesterday"? Is it right?
It snowed a lot yesterday, so we all cannot go to work. - close enough? In any case I feel the current answer is too restrictive.
Definitely. There is no word for "heavy" there specifically. It just says "the snow was very great". That is expressed idiomatically as "it snowed a lot".
Actually, 大 generally means "big", not great and in this case the sentence literally translates to "the snow was very big", mashing "the snow was heavy".
- 238
I agree with the "a lot", but meiyou + verb shows past tense as far as I know. "We haven't gone to work" works too, I guess.
In specific context it does work, but without one I'd suggest sticking with simple past => 'didn't go'; the usage of present perfect sounds kinda confusing here. In the first clause you talk about yesterday, yet in the second clause you basically talk about yesterday AND today (present perfect indicates an action that overlaps to the present). So the sentence 'yesterday it snowed heavily, we haven't gone to work' is missing something, there should be, e.g., 'ever since' added.
But I agree that it should be accepted.
You say... The snow was heavy yesterday... Poor English.. My question is how much did it weigh haha. Your English translation is weak.
