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?
2 Answers
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.
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2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Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 0:45
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@孤影萍踪 I think you're right. Putting in context makes it much more natural. I'll update the answer.– NS.X.Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 0:54
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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. Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 6:41
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I see...well thank you guys for help, it really helped me.– user3491Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 20:48
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.
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2This 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. Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 22:08
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@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.– rhughesCommented Nov 11, 2013 at 3:01
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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？".– StanCommented Nov 11, 2013 at 11:17
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“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.Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 20:29