"我昨天晚上十一点睡觉。"
Translation:I slept at eleven last night.
142 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1024
to sleep and to go to bed are not equivalent in English, even if they are in Chinese
1113
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.
257
How about if you change "I" for "we"... Then it's not the same "to sleep" than "to go to bed"
1711
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.
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.
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
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.
858
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.
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.)
1823
I wrote "I was sleeping at eleven o'clock last night". It was considered incorrect. Slept never crossed my mind.
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...".
2594
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.
683
"I went to sleep at eleven yesterday night": not accepted. Why? Might be a bit awkward, but not incorrect
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.
408
I haven't seen it being mentioned anywhere, could someone maybe explain why we can't use 了 here?
408
I haven't seen it being mentioned anywhere, could someone maybe explain why we can't use 了 here?
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?
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."
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.