"It only takes an hour and a half to drive there."
Translation:开车去那儿只要一个半小时。
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1631
I don't understand the position of the time in Duo's sentence. I think it may have something to do with duration, but I am not sure.
It would be really helpful if a native/advanced speaker could show us all the possible ways to rearrange the Chinese sentence, starting with the most natural and ending with the least natural.
Not a native speaker but my Chinese teacher is. She said the reason for this word order is that Chinese always put the point of emphasis at the end of the sentence.
In this case, the important point being made is how short the drive is.
I don't know if your version is wrong, but I will say I've never seen it phrased that way.
After consulting Bing dictionary. 一个半小时 seems to be an hour and a half. Half an hour would be 半个小时.
- 1622
Do we need the "那儿" here or would 开车去只要一个半小时 also be ok? (given that it can be left out in other sentences)
I have the same question. I'm sure "开车去只要一个半小时" is a valid sentence and I'd say "it take an hour and a half to drive there" = "it takes an hour and a half to drive". So I don't see any reason to require 那儿 / 那里.
- 1076
Without 去, the sentence would be talking about driving a car at that location (like, being there and driving around in circles) rather than driving a car to that location.
Can someone please explain what is the difference between 一个半小时 and 一点半小时？I'm still confused about when to use 一个半 and 一点半
一點半（一点半）is a time: half past one o'clock; 一個半小時（一个半小时）is a time span: one and a half hours.
In this expression the 點 is not behaving like a decimal point.
- 392
The English sentence "an hour and a half" is very confusing when try to translate into Chinese. It would be easier if say "one and a half hour"