"My friend was in New York yesterday."
Translation:我的朋友昨天在纽约。
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Do you say "what did you made last week?"? 了 and 昨天 in the same sentence would look like that
No, but you would say He was in New York yesterday....not is, was...
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Very complicated for Brazilians because we really do speak like that. Everything in the past
but I just had the answer 我昨天见了我的医生 accepted for the previous question. I guess it depends on the verb?
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No because 在 is not an action and 了 after a verb marks it as a completed action.
The past tense marker here is 昨天.
Why is 了 not used with 在?
I think of it this way: I don't say, "I was atted New York yesterday." In Chinese "to be" verbs remain the same regardless of the time frame. 在 is a verb that includes "to be"in its meaning along with "at." So I literally say with 在, "Today I am at; tomorrow I am at; and yesterday I am at."
Consider these two sentences: 1. 我昨天在纽约 2. 我昨天在纽约了 In the second sentence, the inclusion of 了 indicates a change of state. In sentence 1, you may still be in New York now. In sentence 2, you are not.
But the prompt is “My friend was in NY yesterday”, which by your example should have 了, but the puzzle is that it is not accepted. You can hardly say “my friend was in New York” when you mean “my friend is in New York”.
This would be so much better if the app would actually teach us instead of trial and error, and error, and error and....
I wish that Duolingo would put translated words next to each character in the answer sentence, as they do for French.
because the zuotian implies already that the event happened already, you don't need to have the past particle. Just like how you wouldn't say "I ate before this already"; you'd only say "i ate before this"
"的" can be omitted for things like close family members, e.g. "我妈妈" or "你弟弟"
"的" can be omitted for things like close family members, e.g. "我妈妈" or "你弟弟"
Only in some cases(like really close relationships as brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers)
no it can include friends depending on the degree of closeness. As long as its someone who's more than just an acquaintance it is accepted
That's interesting how it weaves a language with less syllable, essentially saying the two are a title, you usually never see one without the other, or something along those lines.
Its interestingly poetic.
我朋友昨天在纽约。is how it's really said, according to Baidu Translate. We get the textbook version here
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Hi. I am having a mess up between morning, evening and noon... Can anybody explain? How exactly do you say morning and evening ?
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The order seems to be zao shang then shang wu for late morning, then chong wu for noon, xia wu for afternoon and then wan shang for evening. Someone else wrote that the first and last end in shang and the middle ones end in wu which helps to remember the order. I do find that shang wu and xia wu sound very similar. Apologies for the phonetic spellings.