第一百八十八天

[nnozomi]

语法
几 + measure word + noun in quantity questions (top of page)
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Measure_words_in_quantity_questions

词汇
零, zero (pinyin in tags)
Also written 〇 but that's no fun.
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-1-word-list/

Guardian:
龙城的冬天都零下好几度了, winters in Dragon City are freezing
为了你这句话我练了几天几夜, how many days and nights did I practice because of what you said

Me:
在你的花园里有几朵花？
今年是二零二二年。

grayswandir linked the Wikipedia (mostly) comprehensive list of measure words, which is fun to browse through. I'm especially taken by 颗 for small objects (一颗珠子, a pearl) and objects appearing small (一颗星星, a star). How do you count stars up close?

Comments

[trobadora]

二零二零 was the first year I paid attention to New Year's events and learned about how to say the year in Chinese. *g*

[nnozomi]

二零二零 was the first year I paid attention to New Year's events and learned about how to say the year in Chinese.
Me too ;) It's so memorable! (Weirdly different from Japanese also, which says "two thousand twenty" or whatever instead of "two oh two oh.")

[trobadora]

Weirdly different from Japanese also, which says "two thousand twenty" or whatever instead of "two oh two oh."

Oh, fascinating! In German you can say "Zweitausendzwanzig" (two thousand twenty) but colloquially you'd always say "Zwanzig-Zwanzig" (twenty-twenty).

[presumenothing]

Oh that's a fun difference! You can do just the last two digits for Chinese if it's already clear which century it is (which it usually is, to be fair) like 92年, 00年 etc in talking about birth years, but the digit-by-digit "format" never changes.

[trobadora]

You can do just the last two digits for Chinese if it's already clear which century it is (which it usually is, to be fair)

Yes, same here! Though it's been a bit less common since the turn of the century, maybe because we're still used to the two-digit forms of the current years standing for 19-something? Idk.

but the digit-by-digit "format" never change

That's fascinating! Yep, very fun difference - here the two-digit form is always read as a number.

[grayswandir]

Same here as well! And I do always remember how to say 二零二零年, but I still have trouble remembering that it's the same for other years, like that 1980 ends in 八零 and not 八十.

[nnozomi]

Numbering the posts here has been very instructive for me, although I still forget sometimes ;)