"我的朋友昨天在纽约。"
Translation:My friend was in New York yesterday.
39 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
As I understand it, 了 is used for completed actions. I would say, being somewhere isn't necessarily completing something, so you wouldn't use 了.
How important is the word order of the sentence? I ask because in English we could day My friend was in New York yesterday or Yesterday my friend was in New York.
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."
So I read a fluentu article recently, which basically said, if I am not mistaken, that Chinese has no tenses, so I would say that they just used the the day to validate when the event occurred. Hopefully I am understanding what both you and the article I mentioned are saying. https://www.fluentu.com/blog/chinese/2013/10/30/chinese-sentence-structure/. Thus, I would say that your consideration of zai as a more or less perpetually "present tense" verb would be correct, but I would think of zai as "in" or "at" in this context, but then I do not know why duolingo would be teaching us le and zai to go before or after words...
why 们 - in other cases they mix singular and plural together - a man could only guess how many person is the sentence about :(
As in English 纽约 is just New York. It usually refers to the city but it depends on the context. If it's ambiguous you can be more specific by saying 纽约市 (New York City) or 纽约州 (New York State).
I live in upstate NY, and when i travel to different parts of the country when people say "New York" they could be referring to the city or the state depending on where i am and the context of the conversation.
In the state of NY people downstate are usually referring to the city when they say "New York", people upstate are usually referring to the state when they say the same thing.
So even in english it can mean either depending on the context of the conversation when it isnt specified
My friend was in New York yesterday. My friend yesterday was in New York...same meaning. It is English so why ..WRONG????????????
I think it was marked wrong because in English we don't say "My friend yesterday was in New York" It sounds unnatural.
"My friend was yesterday in New York" im not a native English speaker but I have the feeling this should be accepted
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My friend yesterday was in New York - This was my answer, which means the same in English as the one that Duolongo gave...
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why "my friend yesterday was in new york" cannot be accepted? english is not my mther language so I cannot feel the difference!
I'm not 100% sure that's incorrect, but it sounds very strange.
The time usually goes at the beginning of the sentence or at the end.
You can say:
"My friend was in New York yesterday"
or
"Yesterday my friend was in New York"
My friend was in New York yesterday. My friend yesterday was in New York. The same because I am learning Chinese NOT English
The part about learning a language is that you should understand it and be able to translate it back to how you would say it.
To be fair both are perfectly valid English, I hope you filed a report, it'll be fixed... eventually.
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I've got the same problem, i am always getting it wrong. I believe "My friend was yesterday in new york" should be accepted as a correct answer. Anyway to report such a bug
If I get it right, 了 is used for action verbs indicating they have been completed. Therefore it is not used for any state verbs, as for example 在
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To say myfriend was in New York yertarday, or My frined yesterday was in New York, is the SAME and both are correct!!!!!
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Why is duolingo giving a mistake when you write "my friend was yesterday in new york". It's exactly the same!