Archive for the ‘Explanations’ Category
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 ...
Posted in Vocabulary | 7 Comments »
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). ...
Posted in Explanations | 4 Comments »
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) ...
Posted in Explanations | 26 Comments »
Sunday, December 17th, 2006
See also: Top 10 measure words to know
As a friend who recently arrived in China said, "Yes but do they really USE all of those measure words?" I don't know about all. But yes, unfortunately, they do use a great deal of them.
These are all the measure words I have ...
Posted in Vocabulary | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
You may have noticed that a whole lot of words end with a neutral toned "zi 子." What does that "zi 子" thing mean? I think it means just that: "a thing."
This is only my theory, but I think because the Chinese language is a homonym minefield that has so ...
Posted in Explanations | 13 Comments »
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