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- "This is my first time taking…
"This is my first time taking part in a soccer match."
Translation:这是我第一次参加足球比赛。
14 Comments
Putting the subject with the verb (这是第一次我参加足球比赛) feels like a more natural word order to me. Should this be acceptable?
504
I did this, too, and was marked wrong
When I tested this with google translate I got:
这是我第一次参加足球比赛 This is my first time participating in a football/soccer match.
这是第一次我参加足球比赛 This is the first time I participated [sic] in a soccer/football match.
ie ...it seems to take the 'my' away in our preferred sentence. Whether or not this is relevant, and both should still be accepted, I have no idea.
Hope that helps
I worked as a chinese linguist for some years, and yes this should be acceptable. In chinese, it means the same thing.
- 371
2020.7.29
Hmm... although I think both answers should be accepted, I find 這是我第一次 more natural than 這是第一次我。
It is like the 我 flows better after 這是 than 第
I don't have a grammatically sound explanation on this and is purely speaking as a person who uses the language (Mandarin in mainland China) as a near-native speaker, so please take what I say with a grain of salt:
With 的: There is something really awkward and unnatural about having a verb following a possessive adjective. similarly you wouldn't really hear phrases like 我的吃饭 or 我的跑步。
Without 的: The 我here is no longer part of a possessive , but the subject of the verb, and the sentence sounds more natural.
- 504
No, neither unusual nor ungrammatical. You can use an adj phrase with the present participle'"..participating..." It modifies 'time' similar to the way a relative clause would. https://www.phrasemix.com/phrases/someones-first-time-doing-something
我的 means my. We don't use 的 in the sentence because you don't need too. The rest of the sentence makes 的 if the sentence is long enough. This is a hypothesis (don't know the correct spelling)
