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- "明天星期几？"
"明天星期几？"
Translation:What day is it tomorrow?
42 Comments
oh it's day as in the week day not week as in which week number.... this makes much more sense now. Have a belated lingot or two.
I can confirm that I answered "What day is tomorrow?" and it was accepted. [23 DEC 2017]
Shouldn't it specifically be, "What day of the week is it tomorrow?"
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Good question! The fact that you have a 几 tells you that it is a question, so you don't need anything else.
Every where other than duolingo where I've tried to look this sentence up it always includes the word "是," as in 明天是星期几。Would any native or fluent Mandarin speakers care to comment on whether the word "是" is required here or not? And why or why not? 谢谢您！
Native speaker here (albeit I learned traditional and not simplified Chinese, and also I speak Cantonese and not Mandarin but that doesn’t make a difference here)
是 is not needed here but it doesn’t make it incorrect to use it. I couldn’t explain exactly why but whenever we talk about time or dates we never need 是. My best guess is that 是 is used for objects, or things that exist rigidly, where as times and dates are not such. Don’t quote me on this though.
This changes however if you’re talking about something that occurs on that time or date, for example, 今天是我的生日 (“Today is my birthday”) or 三點是放學時間 (3 o’ clock is when school is out).
I think overall it’s a matter of what sounds natural which is also perhaps why it isn’t used. Using 是 for time and date sounds weird to me. Even in Cantonese where 是 becomes 係 to mean “is/to be” it still sounds weird to say it when talking about time and date.
1st does 几 work like 多少 to mean how many and are they both valid here ?
2nd when i put 星 in google translate it show me that it means star, and 期 means period, can someone explain to me the logic of how this word is composed ?
Hi, native Chinese speaker here.
几 tends to be more general of a measure question. Roughly, it means “how” in reference to another adjective, like how high (几高), how big (几大), how much (几多). More properly, 多少 is asking “is it a lot or a little” much like when you say 是不是 it’s quite literally asking “is it or is it not?” which is just another way to frame the question “is it?”
星期 the phrase comes from a historical definition for a week in reference to the lunar calendar. The seven days of the week referred to the seven celestial bodies in our solar system that we knew of by the time Chinese was around: 日，月，火星，水星，木星，金星，土星 which refer to the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn in that order, Sunday being the first day of the week. As for why they were named as such is beyond my knowledge but it’s basically explained in deeper Chinese astrology.
The Chinese question is so much clearer. In English, is not clear if the questioner would like an answer of Friday (for example) or December 27th (for example).
Well, I study Japanese and Chinese In this duolingo app. But when I see this sentences, Japanese(明日は何曜日ですか) Are more free then Chinese(明天星期几) to translate to English. Why I can't put "Tomorrow" first in Chinese-English, But I Can put it in Japanese-English. Even through it's was 100% same meaning. Tomorrow, What day is it?(ノ_<。)うっうっうっ
Because that’s not how grammar works linguistically. English and Chinese are SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) order languages, and Japanese is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) order. While that doesn’t necessarily indicate anything for this specific sentence, sentence structure is certainly important in any language. Yes there are ways to manipulate the sentence order but then it would take on different meanings however subtle. In English, it’s called passive voice. Example: “I gave you a book.” vs. “A book was given to you by me.” The sentences say the same thing but the emphases are different. Same goes for Japanese and Chinese. So in theory, yes in English you could say “Tomorrow is what day?” but the equivalent in Chinese would also be to switch the sentence around: 「星期几啊，明天？」(You have to add the 啊 because of this emphasis I’m talking about.) In each of the questions phrased this way there is more emphasis on tomorrow being the day you are talking about, as opposed to the original sentences having emphasis on the question of “what day” it is.
I hope this clarifies; I am a native Chinese speaker so I can give this example for Chinese but I don’t know Japanese grammar so I can’t speak to how they would restructure their sentence for the same emphasis.
Well, Thanks Miss. For Explain this. But in Japanese, You can put word "Tomorrow" in the first and the last too, when translate to english, So It's not a problem in Japanese. And I know English and Mandarin SVO, but Japanese SOV. Well, let's review this sentences again "明天星期几" 明天=Tomorrow 星期几=What day is it. So, it's should work too in Chinese. "Tomorrow, What day is it" same as English Grammer, but Duolingo Doesn't allow it. So it's must "What day is it Tomorrow"(ノT_T)
As I said, you can do that but it would mean something different. 明天星期几 translates to "What day [of the week] is it tomorrow" whereas 星期几啊，明天 translates to "Tomorrow, what day is it" because of the emphasis.
I grew up speaking Chinese and English so I am native to speaking both languages. Japanese, I cannot speak for.
Whats the point of the questions in which we speak the audio? It marks it correct no matter what. It's told me I was correct before i finished speaking once.
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Really? I only get it right when the answer is only one word. But my translation is always correct as I've checked afterwards. I don't know about you though. It might be different.
I wrote what date is tomorrow, or Tomorrow is what date? Shouldn't that be accepted?
This question has been asked and answered many times. Please read the comments before posting.
Date would be 号/號 as that correlates to day of the month. 星期 refers to the day of the week, or simply just day.
