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Alan: Hello everyone, welcome to real Chinese from Confucius Institute Online, I'm Alan.

Mike: I'm Mike. We are now in newbie level section, in this level, you will learn how to ask people in different way, the number, the day of week, date of the month.

Alan: Today, we are going to study how to inquiry. In Chinese language, there are many sentence patterns used for making an inquiry. You can make an inquiry about various topics such as time, place, reason, number or amount, one's opinion or possession of something, the state or properties of things, or an action as well as its actor, object or manner, etc.

Mike: The function of these patterns overlap sometimes, which means you can make the same inquiry in different ways by using different patterns, or use the same patterns to inquire about different things. But a certain context there is always one way more appropriate than others.

Alan: Today we start with time inquiry, 现在几点？（xiàn zài jǐ diǎn）　what time is it? what’s the time? 今天几号？（jīn tiān jǐ hào）what’s the date today？今天星期几？（jīn tiān xīng qī jǐ）What day is it today?

Mike: 现在几点了？（xiàn zài jǐ diǎn le）Alan？

Alan: 现在7点25（xiàn zài qī diǎn èr shí wǔ）.

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