How to Say the Other Day in Chinese

Sep.18, 2019

All languages share frequent expressions.

When you try to speak a foreign language, you will find yourself stuck at somewhere that never be a crucial grammar in the textbook, but somewhere very small you often used in your mother tongue.

For instance,

The expression like "what's up", "like this", and "anyway" that we talked about in the previous posts. You can check them out if you missed them earlier.

We plan to spot and explain these words one by one to clean the "dead angle" of the textbook, to help you bridge the gap between the textbook and real-world language for you in this series of posts.

So follow us if you also need these words to improve your fluency!

The expression that we're going to talk about today is "the other day". How to say "the other day", a frequent English spoken word in your chatting with friends, in Chinese?

We say it in this way:

前两天 or 前几天

qián liǎngtiān / qián jǐtiān

In Chinese, it literally means, "two days ago / several days ago".

In this expression, "两liǎng" doesn't literally mean "two", it refers to an approximate number "two" to "several".

You can use "前两天（qiánliǎngtiān）" or "前几天（qiánjǐtiān）" in this way:

I saw him the other dayhere.

我前两天在这儿看到他了。

Wǒ qiánliǎngtiān zài zhèr kàndào tā le。

I lent Lily my scooter the other day.

我前两天把我的电瓶车借给Lily了。

Wǒ qiánliǎngtiān bǎ wǒ de diànpíngchē jiè gěi Lily le。