"I play soccer for two hours every Friday."
Translation:每星期五我踢两个小时的足球。
12 Comments
904
Can someone who is a native speaker/well versed in knowledge of when and when not to use "的" answer this?
Is my answer of "我每星期五两个小时踢足球。" correct? Or do I NEED a ”的“ in the sentence?
If you want to omit ”的“ you can say “我每星期五踢足球两个小時” . Just make sure you keep the period of time (how long) after the verb(踢).
- 81
That's a pretty big question, but I'll do my best to help. I'm not a native speaker, but I will link to some resources that I've found helpful:
Expressing Time
If you're wondering about the use of "的" specific to this particular sentence pattern (i.e. expressing time duration of a verb), here is an article from MandarinFriend.wordpress.com.
Other Uses of 的"
But "的" has many other functions and appears in many sentence patterns. So if you're asking about ANY possible time to use "的", here is an article and a video that summarize the "de" particles.
Or if anyone out there is a huge grammar-nerd (like me), there are over a dozen articles on ChineseGrammarWiki, which cover the many of patterns that require our little "的" friend!
No you dont need a 的 but your sentence is still incorrect. You need the verb before the time.
You're mixing time point (WHEN, 每星期五) with tine duration (HOW LONG 两个小时). These are grammatically separate concepts and must be handled differently. See discussion and helpful links above.
- 27
I translated it as "我每星期五踢足球提的两个小时". It was reported as incorrect, but don't understand why. The correct answer was: "每星期五我踢两个小时的足球".
The simple answer is that you can't use 的 before a time duration like that. For more details, see links above.
