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- "现在差一刻五点。"
"现在差一刻五点。"
Translation:It's a quarter to five now.
78 Comments
According to Google Ngram Viewer, "It's quarter past" has overtaken "It's a quarter past" in frequency of usage in British English in the last 15 years or so, and is also becoming more common in American English. "It's quarter to" still trails "It's a quarter to" in usage frequency, but not by a very wide margin. So "It's quarter to five now" definitely should be accepted.
https://bit.ly/2FbApB8 (click on "Search lots of books" to generate the graph)
My knowledge of the Chinese language isn't good enough to comment on whether or not the "now" is necessary in this sentence.
"A" is required here; "[It is] quarter to five." is bad English.
The sentence is certainly more natural without "now" though.
522
"It's quarter to five now" is accepted. I would never say it with the "a". Canadian here.
Interesting I never thought about that, english is my second language. I always say it without the "a"
I'm American, mid west. I hear the "a" about half the time. In fact, I think "Quarter to five" without anything else, is the most common response to a request for time.
In England, 'a' is not required - furthermore you're not learning English, you're learning Chinese so it should not matter.
Though i agree with now. A is still said in english even if its blurred with its more like itsa quarter past 5
Yes. It's so annoying that they still haven't fixed the totally reduntant "now" in these sentences.
"A" is required by the English expression, and "now" is present in the Chinese sentence so ought to be added to the English.
No, "now" is Chinese-speak; is just a literal translation, which makes the English sentence look like someone translated it from another language. It's as if you were to read a dialogue between two friends meeting , one of them says : "你 吃 了 吗？“ and translate that as :"Did you eat?" when actually, you want to translate it as (for instance): "How is it going?" .....
"A" is most definitely not required, it sounds bizarre. Is it an American phrase?
- 1230
I agree that 'a' is required. DL should accept without 'now' since it is implied in English, unless in Chinese that part is optional and there to be specific.
In college, I was taught that this sentence should be structured "现在五点差一刻“ This is also the structure that the Pimsleur audio courses use. Does anyone know if it matters if"差一刻” comes before or after the “五点”? To me, the given sentence seems grammatically incorrect, but I'm not a native speaker.
Why is 差 translated as "worse", and how does it fit into this sentence? This is very confusing.
- 1034
The radical meaning of 差 is "difference". When something is "bad", its difference from the standard is being noticed, and thus 差 is extended to "bad". It would need some comparative words to mean "worse".
我今年成绩很差/My results are bad this year.
拿个B 也没差/There's no difference getting a B.
我一直拿A 的！差很多了！/I used to get A! It's much worse now!
If you know any Spanish, it might help to relate it to the Spanish way of telling time... rather than saying "quarter to five", you'd say "five less a quarter" (las cinco menos cuarto).
I for one think the now is absolutely necessary (现在). You don't want to just translate every sentence into "perfect" English because then you will just be relying on rote memory rather than actually understanding the characters and the Chinese sentence structure. I actually wished duolingo allowed more "dirty" English rather than sometimes requiring one commonplace Chinese phrase to be translated into the similar commonplane English phrase. Just because they're often said in the same context in each culture doesn't mean they hold the same meaning!
- 1034
This is very sensible and inspiring for language learning, and deserves a lingot. In English we use the impersonal It to tell the time but such structure is much less used in Chinese. If someone says this without "now", it would become a bit difficult to tell what he's talking about, unless we already knew Time is the topic.
Duo is confusing here with the sentence structure. It isn't made clear whether 差一刻 should follow 五点 or come before it. Apparently, it's interchangeable, given that they accept both answers. It should be specified which is more often used, though.
"Now it's a quarter to five" (Wrong) "It's a quarter to five" (wrong) "It's a quarter to five now" (correct)
So besides having to study Mandarin, I also need to learn psychic abilities to gess up the "correct" answer
Yes, you left out the apostrophe from "It's". Apart from that it is perfectly good English. It would be most appropriate if you had been watching the clock for a while and wanted to emphasis what the time had progressed to since the last time you mentioned it.
Im English and id never say 'its a quarter to 5 now' but i have heard it used. I think both should be accepted.
Used "It's a quarter to five just now" but the 'just' was not accepted. Has the same meaning as 'right now'
"It is now a quarter before five." should be accepted if "It is now a quarter to five." is accepted.
“It is quarter to five" wrong correct answer is "NOW it is quarter to five" Really?????
Why do they need me to add "now" at the end? I'm sick of getting things wrong because Duolingo doesn't understand how people speak in regular conversation.
- 411
It is amazing how they refuse answers that are exactly the same and even better than their own ones
I live in the UK. "Quarter to five" (without "a") sounds more natural.
The solution would be if the tool accepted both versions.
One of the definitions of 差 given by Wiktionary is "to be short of", so I'd say you can think of 差一刻五点 as "15 minutes short of 5 o'clock".
It should accept both answers with and without the 'a' since there are no changes to the meaning and it has no impact on how much Chinese you understand.
yes, if you're on the desktop version and look at the "tips" it shows both examples being used.
I don't know where to put this comment. So here goes: in the hints for "Time 3," 九点三刻 is incorrectly rendered as 5:45.
I mean, I think you only need to say, fifteen minutes cause technically that is what it means
While I am being denied my answer, the "correct answer" as posted on the page is in terrible English..... Should I trust carrying on? Or am I helping Chinese speakers form better sentences in English? Either way, let me know . . .
- 146
'Now it's quarter to five' is marked wrong though it's the exact equivalent in English of the' correct ' answer.
- 444
The article before quarter has not been necessary for over 50 years. I know what I heard as a child.
We use 'to' and 'past' with 'quarter' and 'half' in English time expressions. 'Till' is used to indicate that something will continue up to a specified time.
I think the "right" in "right now" is unnecessary here. Your "til" requires an apostrophe (i.e., it needs to be "'til") since it's an abbreviation of "until".
Patrick_Dark no, "til" is actually incorrect. (It really is, I was suprised to when I heard about that). It is either "until" or "'till". "'til" doesn't exist.
I agree. There is no need for now. I have never heard "Now" used in that context. Because the Chinese means "just now", maybe both can be accepted with "It's 4:45" as the main solution.
