"She likes to smoke after drinking alcohol."
Translation:她喜欢在喝酒后抽烟。
28 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
That's what i put, but only because there was no option to put 以后. I think you need to use 在 if you can't use 以后 or 然后.
This 后 is short for 以后 which should be easy to look up in your grammar reference. Theres also 以前
I have looked at this example sentence many many times and I still cannot make heads or tails of it.
她 = She
喜欢 = likes
在 (not strictly necessary, but shows that we are talking about the upcoming time unit in general, not one specific instance)
喝 = to drink
酒 = alcohol
后 = after the event listed prior (after occasions of drinking alcohol)
抽烟 = to smoke.
Thanks. The zai I normally take to mean "located at" but see it also means "to". Which wasn't clear as it was "hidden" in the hover translation of "likes" by being under the main interpretation. Still seems to be a form that will take a long time to be instinctive. The hover translation wasn't overly clear about the "after" either, having just jammed it in as part of the "drink alcohol" translation. Still, a bit clearer now thanks to you.
No, "在" doesn't mean "to"; it roughly still means "located at", but in this usage the location is on a timeline, relative to the progression of an activity.
("喝" and "抽烟" are verbs but probably shouldn't be put in the to-infinitive in a direct word-for-word translation, as Chinese verbs don't have variable forms in and of themselves. Context and other words acting as aspect/mood markers can impart the appropriate "color" to a verb.)
515
I think Chinese grammar always puts time phrases first while in English we're used to putting them at the end. So if she smokes after drinking, the "after drinking" phrase comes before the smoking. Things get more confusing because the word for "after" itself comes after the word instead of before. She likes at drinking (time afterward) to smoke.
No, it can't. For most verbs, and all verb-object compounds (such as "抽烟") as far as I'm aware, an adverbial "在" phrase must precede the verb: "我在中国工作".
There are a limited number of verbs for which the "在" phrase can come after the verb as a sort of complement. I don't know of any such verbs that are composed of two characters or more.
These exceptions to the general rule are "坐", "放", "住", "站", "待", etc., which I call "verbs of positioning" (and we would expect the "在" phrase to refer to a physical location, not a time as we have in the current Duolingo sentence).
This exception to the usual placement of the "在" phrase is subject to any modification of the verb's aspect, and thus you get "他住在中国" (simple indicative aspect) but "他在中国住过" (past aspect).