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I was wondering, which is the correct sentence in this case.

你的生日是几月几号？ or 你的生日几月几号？ (without 是)

Also can I omit 的 in this case?

user3491
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2 Answers2

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The line without 是 is not a correct sentence because it doesn't have a verb. It's fine in spoken language but should be avoided in formal writing.

In this sentence, it is fine to omit 的 in spoken language, too.

To recap,

你的生日是几月几号？ Grammatical, fine for both formal and informal usages.

你的生日几月几号？Not a complete sentence, only used in spoken language.

你生日是几月几号？Whether it's grammatical is arguable. Regardless, it's common in spoken language.

Community
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NS.X.
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    你的生日几月几号？ sounds perfectly fine to me. True, something is omitted, but it is colloquial, and a lot people say it that way, I guess people are lazy, they try to omit as much as possible as long as the meaning is still conveyed. Other examples are: 你身高多少？or 你数学多少分？or 你生日哪天啊？or 你这双鞋多少钱？ or 你眼镜多少度？ or 你血压多少？ or 你兄弟几个？or 你老家哪里？ – 孤影萍踪 Nov 09 '13 at 00:45
  • @孤影萍踪 I think you're right. Putting in context makes it much more natural. I'll update the answer. – NS.X. Nov 09 '13 at 00:54
  • I'd simply say 你生日几月几号 in colloquial circumstances. We don't even need the 的 between 你 and 生日. – user58955 Nov 09 '13 at 06:41
  • I see...well thank you guys for help, it really helped me. – user3491 Nov 09 '13 at 20:48
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As a general rule, if you use a 是, you should have a corresponding 的.

For instance:

这是很好吃的！ 我今天是很忙的。 你今天是怎么样的呢？

The Chinese, though, favor saying less to get the same meaning across. So when speaking, sometimes the 是 and/or the 的 will not be spoken.

rhughes
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    This isn't really relevant to the question that was asked. The sentence in question is "你(的)生日(是)几月几号?" which is definitely not a 是...的 form. The two words in this sentence really don't have anything to do with eachother. – Stumpy Joe Pete Nov 10 '13 at 22:08
  • @StumpyJoePete Technically it is a 是。。的 form, as the fully correct sentence would have a 的 at the end of it, but that is being overly correct. – rhughes Nov 11 '13 at 03:01
  • I don't recognize this structure as a 是...的 form according to my language intuition. But I feel it's OK to say "你生日是几月几号的？" in spoken language to show your intentional emphasis on the date. However I seldom hear that. A similar expression is "今天是几号？" -- for this one I've never heard any native speaker would say "今天是几号的？". – Stan Nov 11 '13 at 11:17
  • “是..的” as a common pattern is merely a statistical result of the grammar that the structure after 是 must be a noun phrase equivalent, which can be a noun, an adjective + 的 suffix, a possessive pronoun (which also ends with 的) or a verb turned into noun phrase (which may end with 的). For nouns they mustn't be followed by 的, e.g. “苹果是水果。” For adjectives, 的 suffix is required, e.g. “天空是蓝色的。” It is a common misconception there exists a pattern “是[noun]的”, e.g. “盒子是塑料的”, but 塑料 is really adjective here. This is true even in spoken language, in @Stan 's example 几月几号 is adjective, you can say 几月几号的生日 – NS.X. Nov 26 '13 at 20:29