"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.
143 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
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。"
868
It's just proof that automatic translation and people who are not true bilinguals tend to translate similarly.
1590
我们都 = "we both" or "we all". Thank you for providing the nuance in understanding the language.
868
No. It would be slightly poor English at worst. There's far worse English elsewhere in the course.
868
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.
868
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.
868
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.
1353
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.
1611
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.
1731
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?)
868
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."
225
Yesterday the snow was heavy or The snow was heavy yesterday. I think they are both right!!!
868
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".
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?
868
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.
868
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.
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."
1130
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...
1144
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.
279
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.
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.
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.
868
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.
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.
506
I sure wish it gave me this Chinese sentence before it asked me to translate the English into Chinese without knowing that grammar yet
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.
The preferred answer, “The snow was heavy yesterday, we both did not go to work”, is ungrammatical, for a couple of reasons. It should be “The snow was heavy yesterday. Neither/None of us went to work” or even better “The snow yesterday was heavy/Yesterday's snow was heavy/There was heavy snow yesterday so/and neither/none of us went to work.” Aside from being unidiomatic, you can't just glue two sentences together with a comma, and you certainly can't say “we both didn't”—you have to choose between “we didn't both” and “neither of us did” (which have two very different meanings).
Your English sentence is not quite grammatically correct, per British or American conventions, because English is strange. We say “it is snowing” and “it snows” (where “snow” is a verb) but “there is snow” and “there was snow” (where “snow” is a noun, like “there is a dog” or “there is cheese”). There is a second problem: we do not really say “we both did not”. There is “we did not both” (if one of us maybe did it) and there is “neither of us did” (if definitely nobody did it). But that is not why your answer was rejected—Duolingo makes the same mistake here.
619
Does it mean they didn't go to work today because of the snow that happened yesterday or they didn't go to work yesterday? I'm thinking it would need to be 上班了 for it to be yesterday that they didn't work. So I'm guessing they didn't go to work the day after the snow. Anyone know for sure?
88
Mine was marked wrong for "it snowed a lot", instead of "the snow was heavy"... am i just not seeing something here, or does this not mean the same thing?
801
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.
619
I think it would need to have a one of those 会 or 能 in there to have the word "cannot" because they add the implication of ability or whatnot. I was thinking about that when i made that mistake the other day.
619
Does it mean they didn't go to work today because of the snow that happened yesterday or they didn't go to work yesterday? I'm thinking it would need to be 上班了 for it to be yesterday that they didn't work. So I'm guessing they didn't go to work the day after the snow. Anyone know for sure?
1046
You say... The snow was heavy yesterday... Poor English.. My question is how much did it weigh haha. Your English translation is weak.