"节日快乐！"
Translation:Happy holidays!
21 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Drives you nuts. There is nothing in the statement that could make any difference as to whether it is singular or plural. Yet you get marked wrong for such a petty thing.
It's both pedantic and absurd. Yet you wrote this a year ago and nothing has been corrected. Is this an abandoned course?
1257
Precisely. I suspect it's because the people (who've put in a lot of hard work) doing this course learnt their English in America. "Happy Holidays" is something one hears in the USA in December to avoid favouring any particular religion. But in a general sense, outside the USA, one could hear 'happy holiday'.
- 1356
Perhaps 'happy holiday' should be accepted, but I've never once heard anyone say that. Yes 'happy holidays' is only used around Christmas, but at least some people actually use that phrase. I don't think there's really any equivalent phrase to 节日快乐 that could be used at any festival in English.
I've also never heard anyone say, "The tree has six birds and seven cats in it." The point is to practise Chinese.
I also think why is this question talking about "holidays" when the Chinese characters used say 节日 or 'festival'. 度假 dù jià, or at least a term with 假 jià in it is what we have learned for holiday so far.
December 2021, Accepted but corrected to "holidays " aw t the bottom of the screen.
Do people actually use this? In what context, is it Spring Festival plus some others? Or is the pluralization misleading?
- 76
Rarely. If a celebration is occurring, most every participant will know the occasion, hence the generic 'happy holiday' is almost never heard or used. Instead the specific celebration or commemoration is given, as in the manner of ' 秋天快乐 ‘ or ’ 生日快乐 ‘ .
In French you would say "bonne fête " which is different from "bonnes vacances". 节日快乐 means bonne fête. Happy festival
- 76
The 'r' in most any Asian language is very dissimilar to English or 'average Indo-European'. The second word is 日 with PinYin 'rì' with a relaxed 'i' that is used only to indicate the falling tone; that being the reason the vowel sounds more as an /u/.
Important to note that particular words in Chinese show a PinYin character yet only the consonant initial should really be said: This is one reason learners find difficulty in being understood due to belief that the written PinYin, a system developed by German priests, fits well into relational expectations between sounds and letters. The finals 'i' and 'e' tend to have this feature hence 吃 and 气 are far from rhythms despite the same literary symbol 'i' and first tone.
- 1345
Duolingo Chinese is attempting to teach me English again! The Hanzi does not distinguish between singular and plural and where I live "Happy Holiday" is the norm because people normally go on one holiday at a time.
