"What day is it today?"
Translation:今天是星期几？
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It seems like the Chinese is asking specifically for the day of the week, but this is not clear in the English.
Agreed. The English sentence could ambiguously be translated as 今天星期几 or 今天几月几号
To Be or Not to Be - to Shì 是 or Not to Shì 是 - that is the question? In previous exercises they did not use 是 - 今天几月几号? jīntiān jī yuè jī hào ? What date is it today? 明天几号 míngtiān jī hào What is the date tomorrow? 星期天几号 xīngqī tiān jī hào What is Sunday's date? As the idiom goes: 学善三年, 学恶一朝.
Do I always have to use 是 with weekdays? It tells me that 今天星期几 is not correct. However, I think I saw similar sentences in other challenges without 是.
A Chinese native told me shi 是 is used in written form and ommitted in oral conversations in general.
Yep, I asked a native Chinese speaker about this and she says she has never once used shi 是 when saying this sentence. She said this is not an instance of slang, but that even written she and other Chinese speakers would be much more likely to simply use 今天是星期几
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I thought 星日期 几 means Sunday. For a beginner, this has got me all muddled up. Duolingo's teaching technique needs work.
几 is how many. 星期几 means 'what day of the week'. You want 星期日 or 星期天, for Sunday.
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I've been using a free app called Pleco to help understand some of these characters and how to use them differently. It also has a great flashcard function. These two apps together are complimentary.
This is listed as my previous mistake as i wrote the sentence without Shi but it now accepts it. 'Duolingo - the gamification of frustration' should be their slogan
