"我的刷牙习惯是每天三次。"
Translation:My habit is to brush my teeth three times a day.
101 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
A habit is some thing or act which one does consistently. Therefore, "I ALWAYS brush my teeth 3 times a day." should be accepted.
I also think this as it's talking about the habit. Otherwise part of the sentence is totally lost in the translation
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I have a habit of brushing my teeth three times a day.
I make it a habit to brush my teeth three times a day.
Starting off a sentence with "my habit is" sounds unnatural or awkward for this phrase. When you are talking about 1 habit it is more natural to say "a habit." To me "my habit is" only seems natural when used in a compound sentence.
"My habit is to drink coffee, then go running."
"My morning habit is to have tea and then do yoga."
"In the evening, my habit is to brush my teeth before bed."
If is was always, it would become: 我永遠每天刷牙三次 or 我總是每天刷牙三次
Also, this is a routine.
The English is a bit awkward but just note that "habit" is a bit more faithful to the Chinese, which refers simply to something the speaker is used to. It's only the latter half of the sentence that indicates that in this case the thing to which the speaker is habituated is a daily routine.
Rather, "my tooth-brushing habit..." (or perhaps even "my teeth-brushing habit..."). The Chinese is specific to teeth, and people also brush their hair, their cats, etc.
(It's also awkward to use the phrasing "My tooth-brushing habit is three times daily". "My habit is to brush my teeth three times daily" is a better structure. It answers the question "What is my habit", which makes more sense than "How often is my habit".)
A note for the Chinese team:
Duo currently proposes "I am used to brush my teeth three times a day".
That's not correct English. In the phrase "be used to", the "to" is prepositional, not infinitival, and what follows it should be a gerund.
The correct sentence is "I am used to brushing my teeth three times a day".
(This is different from "I used to brush my teeth three times a day", which refers to something that occurred in the past. In that case the verb "be" is not included, and the verb following "used" is in the infinitive.)
Edit: Apparently as of 2021-06-23 (three years later) "used to brush" is correctly marked wrong.
Also agree. If they wanted to say my teeth brushing habit is 3 times a day they have to say 我的习惯是一天刷牙三次。something like that is closer to their english answer
If I recall correctly, they've changed the English a bit, but yes, perhaps "我的习惯是每天刷三次牙" is a more direct translation of what they have now, "My habit is to brush my teeth three times a day".
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I would say that's literally correct but doesn't sound that natural English to me. But this isn't an English test (-:
This isn't an English test? Shh, don't tell the secret, or people may stop complaining.
"my teeth brushing habit is three times every day" was rejected but I think it's ok
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I think it's literally correct but sounds more natural with "per day", "each day" or "daily".
It would have rejected all of those too, since including 'habit' gets rejected :(
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Well we're here to help them get the beta Chinese course into shape so let's submit all the suggestions and their team will get through them with time.
That's also what I submitted. I feel like I'm getting all these translate the sentence ones wrong just because my wording is more towards literal translations. They should just let us choose from word lists like they do for writing Chinese to translate the English text.
"My teeth brushing habit is three times per day." should be accepted. I'm supposed to reword to "My habit for brushing teeth is three times per day." per the suggested answer, which shouldn't be necessary.
I agree, and I'd even go so far as to say that the suggestion is more awkward and makes it slightly more ambiguous as to whose teeth are being brushed. I'd want "for brushing my teeth" in that one. ;-)
"My habit is to brush my teeth three times a day" should be accepted. The answer provided as a correction has a grammatical error: "I am used to brush my teeth three times a day." should be "I am used to brushing..." And frankly, "I am in the habit of brushing..." should also be accepted.
"My habit is to brush my teeth three times a day" should be accepted. It makes sense and is gramatically correct.
In Chinese, the grammar and syntax are a bit different from English. Literally, the Chinese means "My brush-teeth habit is every day three times." Useful to know if you are learning Chinese.
It would be an interesting teaching approach to focus on the Chinese syntax instead of trying to teach us English. That would be be a novel and interesting! I focus a lot on the Chinese syntax as that is critical to me getting to grips with the language. That feeds my ability to convey what i mean. I had the same experience in a face-to-face class snd once we got over that the learning experience improved on both sides - they stop wasting time trying to teach me a language i've mastered (i'm an academic) and focus on constrcting sentences in Chinese. I like your view on the usefulness of the Chinese syntax! That could be do interesting! I think Mandarin may be more susceptible to be taught in this way as, so far, it seems more 'regular' than having vast areas of 'irregular' components.
What I was given as the correct answer: "I'm used to brush my teeth three times a day." is not English. At least it's not normal native English. We would never put it like that. We would say it like it is on this discussion answer: "I brush my teeth three times a day." And we don't need to mention that it is our habit. That's understood.
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True but the Chinese version is about the habit, not just the brushing or the number of times. Good natural ways to convey that in English are "I'm in the habit of ...", "I normally ...", "I usually ...", "I always ...", etc.
Hey guys Singaporean Chinese here. Another natural translation is "I brush my teeth thrice a day", hope the mods can accept it! :-)
It is insanely frustrating that these translations are sometimes more literal to the Chinese and sometimes more idiomatic English, sometimes a combination of the two, and you have to memorize exactly the word order and oddities of each one in order to pass lessons and tests. I have quit and rejoined a few times now, and I realize it's always right around this lesson, the translations for which are terrible. (Nine in the mornings? No one says that.)
This comment was written when the correct translation was set to be "My teeth brushing habit is three times a day."
I do not agree with this translation. It might be (don't quote me on this, I am not entirely sure) grammatically correct, but it is an illogical sentence. The commonly accepted way to express this idea in English is to say that one's habit is brushing teeth three times a day. In most cases, phrases such as "three times a day" are used similarly to adverbs and are thus not used to describe nouns such as a "teeth brushing habit" (or at least, where I am from in the United States).
I'll be honest, throughout the entire chinese course up till now, this sentence is the biggest trash. The english DOES NOT correspond to the chinese. Chinese to english would be "My teeth brushing habit is to(always/) do it three times/thrice (/every) a day/daily" OR the chinese from this english "我习惯（是）每天三次刷牙“
well, the Mandarin sentence is just wrong, no native speaker in Taiwan would put it that way. It does sound very China though. The grammar of this sentence probably borrowed from the English one. 我每天會刷三次牙 or 我每天都刷三次牙sound more natural.
I don't see the English influence here. The closer the English gets to the Chinese structure, the more stilted it sounds, and if it goes too far in that direction, it's no longer correct.
But I'm curious: if you think "我的刷牙习惯是每天三次" sounds very "China", why are you saying it's wrong?
Are there any mainlanders that can weigh in?
I spend more time finding the accepted English wording than learning Chinese. This is not the purpose.
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In the dental literature the term is 'tooth brushing' not 'teeth brushing'! Same as in 'coffee making' not 'coffees making', 'bread making' not 'breads making', 'house cleaning' not 'houses cleaning' etc
A better translation would be:
'I have the habit of brushing my teeth three times a day'
This time the phrase 'my tooth brushing habit' does follow the text, but you contradict yourself and say 'my habit is to...', which you didn't like before!
I see you've changed your mind now about how you want to translate this sentence. You new version sound like good English now!
Actually this says "My teeth brushing habit is three times a day." It sounds incredibly awkward. You can just say 我习惯每天刷三次牙
From comments on this page and elsewhere, it seems that a lot of native Chinese speakers prefer "...刷三次牙" over "....刷牙三次".
In other words, the frequency phrase gets placed in the middle of the verb-object phrase.
Please clarify why "My habit is to brush my teeth thrice daily." not acceptable?
my habit is to brush my teeth three times each day: wrong because I wrote "each" instead of "a".
Hey, can someone tell me can't you say my habit t brush my teeth is three times a day? because I think it makes sence.
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We don't typically say "My habit to [verb] is...". We say "My habit is to [verb]".
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You need a sentence that says what your habit is: [My habit] is [to brush my teeth three times a day].
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"Is" connects two equal things: (1) my habit; and (2) to brush my teeth three times a day. You could also switch them around: To brush my teeth three times a day is my habit.
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For this particular sentence, we want to answer the question "what", i.e. "what is my habit" or "my habit is what". The answer works best if it's a noun phrase, which "to brush my teeth" fulfills. Technically "three times a day" answers the question "when" or "how often", and it doesn't really make sense to say "My habit is three times a day" unless we understand "to brush my teeth" to be implied after "is". It certainly doesn't make much sense to ask the question "how often is your habit" or "when is your habit".
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The English is a bit different from the Chinese. The Chinese effectively says "My tooth-brushing habit is three times a day". That's not an impossible way to phrase it in English, but, for the reasons I give in point 4 above, it doesn't sound as good in English. It's understandable but lazy. (That said, Duo's English sentence isn't the most natural-sounding itself, though it's grammatically correct.)
No it shouldn't. That's not native English, and it's bad grammar. Fortunately they've corrected this.
I can certainly see why this original commenter chose to be deactivated. It's been a long time 30 or 40 lesson sets since I've seen sentences as unflexible and really non-american English when you get down to it as these. I've thrown away two sets of hearts on the last two lessons. Oh well easy come easy go, more practice more hearts, and more experience points if you are into the competition. And it's free. If only their English was a little freer.再见 deactivated Duolingo朋友！
HA! They will accept "I habitually brush my teeth three times every day" which isn't a completely terrible translation.
One of the fossilized, flawed sentences which harken back to when the Chinese tree here on Duolingo was simply unbearable.
Well, it's all a matter of where to draw the line between a correct translation and an incorrect one, but technically you've translated "每天刷三次牙是我的惯是". Also, in English we would usually say "brushing my teeth", not simply "brushing teeth". Otherwise it sounds as if you're brushing the teeth of unknown others.
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The difficulty always seems to be getting a translation which is sufficiently literal to satisfy their stored answers and reproduces the key phrases while at the same time making the English not sound too stilted. Often to achieve this I find i just have to memorise their answer rather than use more satisfactory English.
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When you understand everything, but you should guess how Duo formulated the sentence...
You'd need "brushing my teeth", because otherwise it sounds like random people's teeth.
Also, it's a little awkward to use the phrasing "My X habit is three times a day". "My habit is to X three times a day" is a better structure. It answers the question "What is my habit", which makes more sense than "How often is my habit".
Why is 每天 "a day" instead of "every day" in this translation?
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This is grammatically correct in English but the nuance would be used for a bad habit like picking one's nose rather than a daily regimen. So for the nuance they're going or the equivalent natural English would be "I'm in the habit of ..."
Thrice is a cool word, not enough people use it any more - they should definitely accept it! (-:
If it's "I brush my teeth three times a day", it'd be 我每天刷牙三次. But since it's "我的刷牙习惯...", which indicates possession, it should have been "My (teeth) brushing habit)..."
- 1746
My habit is to brush my teeth three times a day. I habitually brush my teeth three times a day. It is my habit to brush my teeth three times a day.
Not to be negative but this is one of the most awkward sentences I have ever read in English. Most native speakers would keep it simple and just say "I brush my teeth three times a day".
"tooth brushing habit" was not accepted. It is a correct translation. Please fix
My answer is identical to the answer below but it's saying that I am missing a word, something wrong with the app
If you translate word for word you end up with that sounds so bizarre in English.
