"परसों बिल्लियाँ सो रही थीं।"

Translation: The cats were sleeping the day before yesterday.

[brianl]

I'm sure they are still sleeping today.

[JerryCurry3]

I'm a native speaker of English, and I generally use "day before yesterday" instead of "the day before yesterday" in a construction like this. What do other native English speakers do?

[Beth205297]

It depends, I think, on the formality of the conversation; dropping the "the" is just relaxed speech, assumed. I might say to a banker I did not know that "I opened my account the day before yesterday", but to my friend who asks when you left a voicemail on their phone, "Day before yesterday. "

[Beth205297]

Does word order matter when the meaning is the same? Is it, therefore, just as correct to say, "The day before yesterday, the cats were sleeping. " as "The cats were sleeping the day before yesterday. "?

[Victoria758614]

It accpeted it when I put the day before yesterday at the beginning of the sentence

[2u841r]

There is a wrong. "the day before" should not be here.
परसों = yesterday and
"the day before yesterday" = 2 days ago (2nd yesterday)

[JerryCurry3]

Hindi is one of a couple (few?) of languages descending from Sanskrit that have a word for "the day before yesterday"/"the day after tomorrow".

• कल = "yesterday", when in a statement about the past
• कल = "tomorrow", when in a statement about the future
• परसों = "day before yesterday" if you're talking about the past
• परसों = "day after tomorrow" if you're talking about the future

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/कल

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/परसों

[2u841r]

Thanks. your comment is very helpful.

[swatipandit44444]

Yeha aaj ki nhi paata aur ya parsoo ki baat krta hain