Lesson 6: Day and Date in Mandarin (A)

If you first visit this blog, you should know that it will only be useful if you know how to read hanyu pinyin (the phonics in Chinese), so feel free to learn in our first post!

For those who have been following, how is the learning going? So far, we have covered the following:

1. Numbers

2. Greetings

3. Addressing Family Members

If you have committed every 20-30 minutes to review the lessons for the past month, you should be able to greet your family member and people around you in General.

Here is some example:

Moving on, let's learn about date:

Here is a few words that you need to know to be able to tell day and date in Mandarin.

星期           Xīng qī               .... day

1. Monday               Xīng qī yī             星期一

2. Tuesday              Xīng qī èr             星期二

3. Wednesday         Xīng qī sān           星期三

4. Thursday             Xīng qī sì             星期四

5. Friday                  Xīng qī wǔ           星期五

6. Saturday              Xīng qī liù            星期六

7. Sunday                Xīng qī tiān/rì      星期天 / 星期日

However, when we say;

一个星期          yī gè xīng qī            One Week

How about date???

In English we will write Date as the following:

1st Aug 2016 or Aug 1st, 2016

In Chinese, we have to start from the year, then month, then end with date. Here are a few words you will need:

1. 日                rì                       Date (use only in writing)

2. 号               hào                     Date (use in spoken language)

3. 月               yuè                      Month

4. 年               nián                    Year

How to say 2nd of Aug 2016?

2016年    8月    2日

        nián    yuè      rì

OR

二O一六年  八月   二 日

               nián    yuè        rì

In spoken language... we say:

Simple right?

Here is a few words that you should know to be able to form a full sentence in telling day/date.

Today (Hari ini)                                  今天              jīn tiān 

Tomorrow (Besok)                             明天              míng tiān

Yesterday (Kemarin)                          昨天              zuó tiān

Day after tomorrow (Lusa)                后天               hòu tiān 

2 days ago (2 hari lalu)                       前天              qián tiān 

verb to be, is/am/are  (adalah...)        是                  shì 

Asking amount (berapa)                    几                   jǐ     --> It can also means "a few" or "some"

So you can form a sentence to say:

Today is Tuesday, 2nd of August

今天是星期二，八月 二号

jīn tiān shì xīng qī èr, bā yuè èr hào

Tomorrow is Wednesday, 3rd of August 2016     

明天是星期三，2016年  八月  三号

míng tiān shì xīng qī sān, èr ling yī liù nián bā yuè sān hào

To form a negative sentence, we use 不是 bù shì

For example:

Today is not Friday.

今天不是星期五

jīntiān bùshì xīngqīwǔ

When you need to ask QUESTION, here is the example:

What date (and month) is today?
今天是几月几号？
jīn tiān shì  jǐ yuè jǐ hào?

What if you are would like to ask for a date only (assuming you are aware what month we are in now)?
Yup! You can say:

What date is today?
今天几号？
jīn tiān jǐ hào?

What day is tomorrow?
明天星期几？
míng tiān xīng qī jǐ?

Listen to the following:

Please translate the following:
1. What date is the day after tomorrow?
2. The day after tomorrow is Thursday.
3. What day is yesterday?
4. Yesterday is Sunday
5. What date and month is 2 days ago?
6. 2 days ago was 31st of July

(Answer to be revealed in next post by the end of this week)

Happy Tuesday,
Linda Tan