Archive for the ‘Explanations’ Category

bié 别 vs. bú yào 不要

Monday, September 29th, 2008

In my last (real) post there was a whole lot of "bu yao-ing" going on to tell someone not to do something.  Well, now I'm going to ask a question that I feel I've never really gotten to the bottom of: What's the difference between "bié" 别 do something and "bú ...

A Bit about Bù 不

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

As promised, here's a little bit about how you have to be careful where you put your bù (不).  There are some tricky things that can throw you for a loop if you're translating English into Chinese (which is what we all do when starting out learning the language).  I'm ...

Why does Chinese have measure words?

Monday, December 18th, 2006

As I finished these measure word posts I had to ask myself (again), "Why does Chinese have all these darn measure words?" Is it like the tones, which seem to exist only to keep foreigners from learning Chinese? As I mention here, the "measure words " (liàngcí 量词) ...