"我昨天晚上十一点睡觉。"
Translation:I slept at eleven last night.
142 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
There is a difference in meaning between sleep and go to bed (at least in my motherlanguage)
"Go to bed" and "sleep" may be similar but it doesnt literally mean the same for other language. They had to be precise with these translations. :)
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to sleep and to go to bed are not equivalent in English, even if they are in Chinese
Agreed. In fact, I've translated it as "went to bed" several times already. This is the first time duo has rejected it. Sigh, shrug, carry on.
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In English the sentence "I slept at eleven last night" without any context just doesn't make much sense. In general this DL Chinese course allows quite often for a not too literal translation, which (ironically) makes insisting on a precise translation in this case just the tiniest bit annoying. But you're right, Alison.
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How about if you change "I" for "we"... Then it's not the same "to sleep" than "to go to bed"
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As in the discussion above, if "went to sleep" means fell asleep, then it is not the meaning of the Chinese sentence, even if it is a natural way of speaking English; Unless if you use "go to sleep" to talk about the process of leaving your living room, going into your bedroom, changing your pyjama, and lying on your bed.
Will you please give a more accurate english translation because the given one can't be accurate as it actually makes no sense. Im curious to get another 'take' on this please.
- 1711
I mentioned it above. I would go for "Last night I went to bed at eleven."
Nothing is to do with falling asleep or not at such time.
Not as big a garbage as your comment, which brings absolutely nothing to the table.
You echo my thoughts exactly. What's difficult is that I can't tell if this is exactly what the chinese sentence says, but I can say the 'english' is poor. It's vague and intangeable.
Report, report, report. Enter a good answer, get it "wrong," report it. Duolingo filters the reports automatically before humans look at them, but the more people report this crummy sentence the more likely it will pass the filter and get fixed.
Every time I get this sentence I think it's just shooting for a different way of phrasing the time. Nope! Still wants the terrible "I slept at 11" garbage.
The sentence, in english, should read "I went to sleep at eleven last night." "Slept" would refer to a duration of time in which one was sleeping (I slept for 8 hours yesterday) or that one had been able to sleep for some amount of time, but not stating a specific time(I slept last night)
-reported this
Agreed. "Slept" is past perfect in English. This is a grammatically incorrect sentence in English.
“Slept" is also simple past. That is not the reason the English sentence is bad.
"Slept" is the past participle of sleep, not the past perfect. The past perfect is "had slept". So, I had slept for two hours last night when the fire alarm went off, what a pain! Luckily, it was a false alarm.
"Yesterday I went to sleep at 11 o'clock at night" wasn't accepted.
This lesson is WAY too picky. I am just trying to learn Chinese, why am I being tested on having English post-graduate level grammer?
I gave this as 'yesterday I slept at 11 p.m.' and would suggest that's valid too!
Woukd you not sleep from eleven? To sleep at eleven is not right. Puzzling!
The accepted answer sounds weird in English. You go to sleep, go to bed, etc at a particular time, but you sleep for a period of time. So, DL, are you trying to teach us English or Chinese???
The "correct" answer is Chinglish, not English. My Chinese students were always saying "sleep" to mean "go to bed." It should be "went to bed" or "went to sleep," no question.
"I slept at 11 o'clock yesterday" is a stupid sentence, nobody speaks like that. People usually say "I went to sleep/bed"
This is not good English, i went to sleep at 11 last night is what would be said. Although slept is the past tense of sleeping, and would be used to say I slept at a friends house last night, it is not right in this context unless you only slept for a minute at 11 which it infers to a native English speaker. But not able to report anything with the English on this one.
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You can't say "I slept at 11 last night" in English because the verb "to sleep" in English has no inchoative aspect. It doesn't sound natural because it's not grammatical in English.
"I went to bed yesterday at 11"-- that's how a native speaker says that same sentence in English
"I slept at eleven last night." is stupid. English is my native language. I work with a native Chinese speaker and she translates this as I went to bed at 11. This is why I stopped using Duo in the past.
I guess - the word order? The more precise (11) should be in front of more exact term (yesterday evening) - but I am not an expert nor the English native speaker...
我昨天晚上十一點睡覺。
"覺/觉" has two pronunciations: "jiào" for sleeping, basically only for 睡覺/睡觉, and "jué" for other meanings, like 覺得/觉得(feel).
"I went to sleep yesterday evening at 11." vs the 'correct' answer "I went to sleep at 11 yesterday evening." What is this? English Language PhD level? Or DL being over-picky about word/phrase order?
The solution "I slept at eleven last night" is incorrect english grammar.
What is the exact meaning of this "I slept at eleven"? Is it in Chinese?... Oh, but it is!
And that's the problem for a non-English speakers: while learning other languages here, we are making our English much, much worse :(
Update: "I went to sleep" IS acceptable. Good news.
No free translation possible for me, only word tiles which did not include "went", "to", or "sleep".
Hi, could somebody more experienced or native Chinese talker speciffy WHAT that sentence above EXACTLY means? Could it be also that a person went to bed (for instance) at 9:00 p.m. and obviously he "slept at eleven last night"? Or does it mean literally that he didn´t sleep at 10:59 but has fallen asleep at 11:00 p.m.? Thanks in advance :)
- 1711
睡觉 means generally going to bed and sleeping. If you tell someone the time you 睡觉 most likely you are telling him the time you go to bed.
睡着 is the verb you would use to tell people you fall asleep. The pronunciation is close but the meaning is different.
e.g.
别吵，孩子在睡觉。
Don't be noisy, the child is sleeping.
别吵，孩子睡着了。
Don't be noisy, the child has fallen asleep.
Both these Chinese sentences are correct and natural.
(Yet, again, these examples are only literal translations. They are not intended to demonstrate natural English.)
I prefer the translation "I went to sleep at 11 last night." I prefer "went to sleep" rather than "slept"; because sleeping is something you normally do over an extended period of time, rather than all at once, e.g. at 11 pm (or am).
- 1823
I wrote "I was sleeping at eleven o'clock last night". It was considered incorrect. Slept never crossed my mind.
"Last night" is not necessary in English. It's obvious it was 11 at night. You would only specify if it was not.
"I slept at eleven last night" is completely ambiguous in English. Is the meaning "went to sleep"? If so, that should be the translation.
ok, here´s a different variation...I put "I was asleep at 11 yesterday" not accepted. Is this necessarily incorrect in all possible meanings of the sentence in Chinese? For example, if asked, "What were you doing at 11 last night?" "I was asleep at 11 yesterday"
- 1711
I would answer 我昨天晚上十一点的时候在睡觉 which is close to "I was sleeping..."
Or I would say 我昨天晚上十一点的时候已经睡着了 which is close to "I was already asleep...".
I said, " last evening" and it was marked wrong. Another time I translated wanshang as night and it was marked wrong, should have been evening. What time does evening turn to night in China?
In English we say go to bed. "I went to sleep at..." Implies you know the exact time you actually fell asleep, which no one does.
I put Yesterday, I went to bed at 10 in the evening. Is there really something wrong with it?
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HIT THE DOWNVOTE under the translation. As of this posting 63 people, whatever else they've said, have protested that the English is incorrect. Why is no one bothering to fix it? Perhaps because there are only FOUR downvotes on the translation. I'm guessing that downvoting is more useful--more likely to get the editors' attention--than repeating the same complaint in the comments.
I just tried "I went to sleep at 11 pm yesterday" and it failed. Why? It has exactly the same meaning as the answer given, is good English (I'm a native British English speaker), and is closer to the Chinese.
can someone explain why "I went to sleep at 11 yesterday night" isn't accepted?
It's because people who made this program may know Chinese, but they hardly know proper English (btw: 'last night' is better, but 'yesterday night' should do too). 'I went to sleep' or 'I went to bed' is correct, whatever Duolingo prescribes us.
"Last night I was asleep by 11 p.m." Not accepted, but isn't that a ver accurate translation?
"I slept at 11 yesterday night" is equivalent to "I slept at 11 last night". I wonder why it isn't accepted
I said "11pm" contextually, that makes sense because the rest of the sentence says, "last night." I lost a point for being too specific?
- 683
"I went to sleep at eleven yesterday night": not accepted. Why? Might be a bit awkward, but not incorrect
In English, we do not say "yesterday night". We simply say, "last night", eventhough, we do say "yesterday afternoon", "yesterday evening". "I went to sleep at 11 last night" is clear that it happened yesterday at night. So, your answer should not be acceptable. Hope this helps.
I agree-shuijiao means to go to bed. I slept at 11:00 is not a reasonable translation.
As a native English (American) speaker, I find the English sentence very awkward. Possibly the Chinese sentence could be better translated as "I was sleeping at eleven last night" in response to a question such as "What were you doing at eleven last night?" Saying "I was sleeping at eleven last night" has a different meaning (in English) than "I went to bed at eleven last night" and also different than "I went to sleep at eleven last night."
I have reviewed your comments. Many things have been said and offer the following, hoping for clarification. I think we can all agree that this translation, "I slept at 11 last night." is incorrect. At best it is awkward. The question is why? The answer is that in English this action requires the use of the auxiliary verb (to go). So, "I went to sleep at 11 last night." For clarification, sleep is an irregular verb. So, sleep, slept, slept, respectively refer to the present, simple past, and past participle of (to sleep). The past participle is used to form all the perfect tenses--present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect in combination with the auxiliary verb (to have). But that is beyond the scope of this topic. By choosing the "keyboard" option, and submitting the answer "I went to sleep at 11 last night." The system accepted this answer but continued to indicate that the alternative was also correct, which we know is not. To say that "I went to bed at 11 last night." is also correct and a common expression with the same meaning, and should be accepted; however, it deviates a little from the terminology used in the Chinese expression. The issue with all this is that the English responses were obviously written by a non-native English speaker. Consequently, they are often awkward and sometimes incorrect, a sin for a language learner purist, right? The solution would have a native English language speaker professional edit all English responses, then we would not encounter or be discussing these grammatical issues. Please let me know your comments. Thanks.
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I haven't seen it being mentioned anywhere, could someone maybe explain why we can't use 了 here?
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I haven't seen it being mentioned anywhere, could someone maybe explain why we can't use 了 here?
It should accept "I slept FROM eleven last night" as "I slept AT eleven" is technically grammatically incorrect. As I assume the person did not sleep at 11:00pm and wake up at 11:00:59pm. So I'm guessing they slept at 12pm and 1am and 2am an so forth as well.
- 825
I put in "i was sleeping at 11 last night" 1st, why not accepted? 2nd, if truly incorrect, how would what i put in be correctly translated?
This skill has terrible English acceptance and wants you to get it exactly the way Duolingo wants it
why is there no 了 for this sentence since I slept last night which is past tense?
I'm not entirely sure, but doing these exercises it seems to me that the 了 is often omitted when a precise time frame is given. Possibly a native speaker could comment?
I wrote "I slept at 11 last night " Why did It wrong? Tell me the answer please
how about "at 11:00 last night I was sleeping" or "I was asleep"?
I think the correct translation would be " I went to sleep (or to bed) at 11 last night
Eventhough in English we can say "yesterday afternoon", "yesterday evening", we do not say "yesteday night". We simply say "last night". In addition, it does not make sense to say "I slept last night at 11." It is either "I was sleeping at 11 last night", [when she called.] Or "I went to sleep at 11 last night."
I forgot to capitalize the letter 'i' and it marked me wrong. What in the world.
I always use lowercase 'i' & lowercase first word of the sentence, & it NEVER gets marked as wrong. Must be some other reason.
Grammar is important! The personal pronoun "I" is always capitalized. That is an English grammar rule!
NO ONE says I went to sleep. A better answer: I went to bed at 11 last night OR Last night I went to bed at 11
- 1711
The standard answer is now "I slept at eleven last night."
Don't people use " to go to sleep"? Perhaps at least some people say it and it means "to fall asleep", 睡着 in Chinese.
Went to sleep is how this is said in English. Nobody says 'slept at'. You will be looked like a fool.
Yes they do! If one is talking about sleep rather than the time in bed. Last night i went to bed at 10pm however i went to sleep at 11pm after I had read my book! slept would not work here and neither would went to bed to say I started sleeping at 11pm. Often used in English English.