The shì...de construction is used to focus on place expressions as well as on time and manner expressions.

Days of the week:

Until now, you have always seen jǐ, "how many," at the beginning of a word (jǐge háizi, jǐwèi xiānsheng, jǐhào). In xīngqījǐ, -jǐ is at the end of the word. In both places, occupies the position of a number and acts like a number: xīngqījǐ, "What number day of the week?"

The word for "year," -nián is a bound word (like the word for "day," -tiān). The question word něinián, "which year," is formed with the bound word něi "which."

The year is given as a sequence of digits, so that 1972, Yījiǔqīèrnián would literally be "one-nine-seven-two year." In a sequence of digits, the word èr- (not liǎng- is used for 2, and the words for 1, T, and 8 keep their basic high tones. (See notes on No. 10 for cases in which these tones change.)

Months:

Since the names of the months are formed with numbers, jǐ- "how many," is the appropriate question word to use for "what month." Jǐ- is used in Běijīng to ask for a number expected to be around 10 or 11.

Notice the tones on the words for 1, 7 and 8, which most Peking speakers pronounce as Rising before Falling-tone words such as yüè. The syllable -yī- in the word for "November," however, is usually pronounced with the High tone: shíyīyüè (See the notes on No, 10 for a summary of tone changes.)

Days of the month are expressed by the number of the day followed by the bound word -haò. You will remember that -hào is also used in giving addresses.

In asking about days of the month, "how many," is used, even though the question may be answered by a number as high as 31. The month and day of the month may be given together. For example:

Nǐ duō dà le? "How old are you?" literally means "How big (in years of age) are you?" This is a common way to ask a person's age. The question is appropriate for asking the age of a child or a young adult, but the expression is not considered polite enough for asking an older adult his age. (More formal ways to ask a person's age will be introduced on the C-2, P-2, and drill tapes.)

The marker le_which ends these sentences calls attention to the fact that something is true now that was not true before.

	Note
	Ages may also be asked and given without using the new-situation le.

Le has only this new-situation meaning in these sentences. It has no meaning of completion, since in fact, there is no completed event.

One way to reflect the new-situation le in the English translation is to add the word "now": I'm 35 now." Essentially, however, "new situation" (sometimes called change of state") is a Chinese grammatical category with no simple English equivalent.

The marker le for new situations is always found at the end of a sentence and is sometimes called "sentence le."

Notice that neither answer contains a verb. The verb that has been left out is yǒu "to have." The verb may not be left out in the negative: Wǒ méiyou sānshiwǔ. "I’m not 35."

-suì: In the traditional Chinese system of giving ages, a person is one -sui old at birth and becomes another -suì old on the New Year's following his birth. A baby born the day before New Year's would thus be two -suì old on the day after his birth. Most Chinese, however, have now switched to the Western style of computing age and use -suì just as we use years old.

The word -suì like the word -hào, is a bound word shoving what kind of thing a number is counting.

In a date or address you are listing a number and use èr for 2, while in giving an age you are counting an amount of something and use liǎng: liǎngsuì, "two years old."

The word dōu is used when "both" or "all" would probably not be used in English, namely, when expecting different information about each of the things (or persons) being discussed. "All" tends to be collective, asking or telling about something the members of a group have in common. Dōu can be distributive, asking or telling something about the members of a group as individuals.

Yí, qí, bá: In the spoken language of Peking, the basic High tones of yī, qī and bā usually change to Rising tones before Falling-tone words (such as -hào, yüè, and -suì). This change is most common when the complete number given has only one digit. When there are two or more digits, the qī and bā of numbers ending in 7 and 8 are more likely to have Rising tones than the yī of numbers ending in 1 (which is usually in the High tone).

Compare:

In all cases, the High tone is more likely to be kept in rapid speech. You may also encounter speakers who never make changes in the tones of yī, qī and bā.

Remember that, in the digit-by-digit form of giving the year, the numbers 1, 7, and 8 keep their basic High tones: Yījiǔbāliùnián 1986.

In the Chinese system of expressing relative time in terms of days and years, only one pair of terms is not parallel: zuótiān "yesterday," and qǜnián "last year."