Second Best

Thank you Jiaojie! Good to know these.

Yeah I hope a teacher, or suansuanru maybe can come by and confirm A-Bin's suggestion, or correct if it's something else. I'd really like to see these original questions of GoManly (oh he's changed names. to Godfrey Bigot) answered "authoritatively" too.

yeah...that might have messed it up.

did u copy n paste?

whoa!? what happened to the formatting here?

They mean different things though, so the comparison is not valid. 第二個最好 means "the second one is the best one"

my two cents

A-Bin

I'm sticking to my theory, but I am surprised there appears to be no French concession.

mine is very similar to kimiik's

“第二个最好” has 1.550.000 hits on Google

“第二个最好的” has 1.440.000 hits on Google

“第二个最高的” has 43.000 hits on Google

Baba, your google is broken.

Perhaps Google extrapolates from a sample, and uses a different sample for each country.

多谢朋友，挺有趣

Well Baba we also say stuff like 下から数えた方が速い shita kara kazo-eta hou ga hayai (oh it'll save time if you count from the bottom), to talk about placing near the bottom among some group, but of course that's different from 倒数第一. I don't think there's a Japanese equivalent.

Also 倒数第一 isn't the only way to express "last place" in Chinese. My J-C dictionary gives (for びり) 最后, 末尾, then 倒数第一. It has 落得最后一名 for "fall back to, or come in, last place" I guess, and 结果是倒数第一 "in the end, came in last place".

An opposite to 倒数 in Chinese you mean? I don't know.

thanks zhen. So I take it there is no Japanese equivalent to 倒数第一名？

Also, is there an opposite to 倒数 ？

Huh I wasn't really thinking what we say in Japanese. I guess we say we're 最下位 sai-ka-i, or much more casually びり bi-ri, for coming in last. In this case though--being last in the class in an exam--actually I'm not sure; we just don't hear about placing last very much. First place is easy, we say トップ toppu, which is just a transliteration of "top".

I suppose you'd say この間のテストでクラス最下位だった kono aida no tesuto (test) de kurasu (class) sai-ka-i datta.

thanks zhen. Interesting that you say "chinese"...am I to surmise from that that Japan is the same as the west in this regard? ie how would it be rendered in translated Japanese?

Yeah it's interesting that Chinese chooses to express it as first--(counting) from the bottom. I guess here we think of 第一 as a superlative.

No worries mate. Yeah, I sometimes find comments way later that I completely missed, and wonder how I missed them. Yes, Zhen gave a good explanation thanks. di yi being last still seems a little strange, but I guess this is an east brain/west brain thing. Just gotta remember it, that's all.

Hey Baba, sorry I didn't see this before. I was using my cell at the time, and it is easier to miss comments. Looks like Zhen answered your question, right?

zhen, thanks for that...well explained. Yes, that's what makes sense in the context I had it in [so I knew from context what they were getting at...just wasn't sure exactly how they were saying it]. I guess what confused me is 第一 which I would have understood as first [ the best result] and it seemed that it was being applied to his result [but I wasn't sure about this either].

What does "All my clothes are red, but this one is the least red." mean? I guess since Xiaophil's wife understood your meaning to be 浅点, it means it's the palest shade of red among all your clothes? Or the dullest? I guess if you have 5 articles of "red" clothing and 3 are crimson or scarlet, 1 is vermillion and 1 is a magenta, either the vermillion or the magenta article could be considered the "least red", is that what you're saying? How frequently is this kind of thing said in English?

Good questions btw, this "second best (tallest)". Hope they get answered well.

(wish we still had the "in reply to" links that showed which comment we're Replying to!)

Baba as you've likely guessed already 倒数 dàoshǔ (not dàoshù) is counting backward, not "counting down to ~". 倒数第一（名） is (dead) last, last place. 倒数第二（名） is second from last.

So 倒数 isn't used when talking about the best or up near the best. It has to be a reference to the last, or near last place.

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%80%92%E6%95%B0/7964

儿子 (or 我) 考了全班倒数第一 seems to be a very common example of its use.

I almost went your route, but I happened upon an example that I modified to suit my needs. Hopefully we get clarification from a native.

"One of" in Mandarin is "之一", placed at the end. So "一百名最美丽的女人之一" sounds better to me.

I tried out 最不红 on my wife. She didn't like it. I guess it is understandable, though.

最不红，最不聪明 seem pretty straightforward to me.

A guess:杂志评价 她是在澳大利亚前一百名最美丽的女人中的.

In this case: 这件浅点. This is from my Chinese wife.

I'm not ignoring it mate. It's another good question. Trouble is any stab I had at it would be just that ..a guess..probably not too helpful. I hope you do get some answers.

Anyone for my question above?

And another one: The opposite of 最高 is 最低. But what about adjectives that have no direct opposites? Like 'red'. How would I say 'All my clothes are red, but this one is the least red.' ? Or lets say you want to avoid calling someone the 'dummest', but instead want to say 'least intelligent'. How would you say that?

found this:

There is a hard limit of 1,000 results returned by Google. At present time there is no way to override the limit, however you might try the date range trick Wally suggested as a circumvention.

..don't know why it stopped just over 500 then.

OK, so now what if I wanted to say a particular magazine rates someone amongst the 100 most beautiful women in Australia.

ok, well displaying the omitted results meant I could only get to page 52..so the first 520 zuoyou. Up to that point it was obeying the quotion marks [it allowed for traditional ge]. What if you're particularly interested in result number 30,799,999 ?...I'd like to check that one out.

呵呵，千万别告诉庇护当局

Hang on a tic...I'm investigating...it's stops at page 29 of the results after displaying 288 returns before asking if you want the similar omitted ones displayed..I'll check them out..back soon

Trust me, you're one in a million. hehe. I am losing all faith in google - the reason I put forth my hypothesis as to how you got that number was I got the same when I removed the quotes. Now I get 60,000,000 without quotes but I still get 1,440,000 when I enter it correctly. I dont think you did anything wrong although I am not sure as one was too small to see and the other had me laughing so hard I couldnt see through the tears in my eyes. I give up. When you figure it out you tell me.

I did notice one difference - you seem to be searching only pages from australia. hmmm. The odd thing is that my searches seem to match all your other numbers just fine.

ps "他是倒数第二最好的" got 0 hits on google, so perhaps it needs tweeking.

I'm glad you raised that sentence. I have a comic where the teacher says to the kid:

你这次考试成绩全班倒数第一

..and I was trying to get my head around what exactly 倒数第一

。。ok, so to me literally that would mean to count down or to count down to number one...to first.

So in the above sentence my understanding is:

your exam results this time, the whole class counted down to number one.

So I'm not sure of a few things here...basically to do with what was the best result, and which direction the counting went. I mean to count down to number one to me suggests you're starting with the worst result and then counting down to number one..the best result in the class. I should explain that this kid's character seems a little like Bart Simpson. So I know from context that he would have gotten the worst result. So are they saying that they counted down to his result ..number one which was the worst. I guess it would make most sense if it was his result [ the worst] and then counted down through the whole classes results to number one [ some other kids result]. Any insights in 倒数第一 and the above sentence?

I wonder if this sentence is natural in Chinese: 他是倒数第二最好的

btw , without the quotation marks, di er ge zuihaode gives me 63,300,000. I guess I'm just privy to more Chinese...must be inside the circle of trust,hehe.

sorry, I had a bit of trouble re-sizing it, and now seem to have over done it, but should be very easy to see now, hehe. If I've cuo'd, it should now be glaring.

Hopefully this will make it easier to check:

hehe, just noticed this:

"ridgy didge only returns about 20,000 btw"

..I must be a 1 in 1000 Aussie. Too bad I can't make it to 1 in a million. ;)

Maybe you can spot my mistake here:

Well RJ, I agree that would explain it. I don't have that tab up anymore to check, but I've just double checked by re-entering ...copying and pasting now [that is coping and pasting the whole including the quotation marks and not adding the quotation marks after] :

“第二个最好的” ..still gives 30,800,000

..maybe the great firewall of china is blocking what they can to the US, hehe. go figure. I agree my result doesn't make sense given the de-de'd came up with less.

baba

:“第二个最好的” only gets 1,440,000 - you must have clipped off one of the quotation marks. (which allows it to find those characters in any order)

ridgy didge only returns about 20,000 btw.

I have no doubt that you've found the correct way.

Anyway, 现在，我要去上中文课。

ps I don't think using google this way should stop you from asking good questions like this. It's still worth getting an authoritative opinion if possible.

Actually, sorry, but I couldn't come up with an answer to your last question that got some back up from google . I guess google just gives some idea....I'm not sure what to make of a million hits for 第二个最好 for example. To me it says that it's not likely to be totally wrong, but it doesn't tell me if it's the most natural way to say it or not. I guess it's about trying to get a feel for the numbers....the longer the quoted phrase the lower the number your going to expect. The more obscure the thing your talking about the lower the number also. I just had an idea of how to get a feel for the numbers. Try the same phrase in English. ok, "second best" gets 3,570,000 hits on google. Ok, that's going to be my feeler from now on for interpreting those numbers. So that tends to suggest to me that 30,800,000 hits for di er ge zui hao de is pretty ridgy-didge

I never think of using Google. It seems like you've answered my question though.

第二 座 最高的 gets another 31300 hits

世界上第二个最高的 gets 35200 hits, but replacing 个 with 座 gives no hits, despite the closeness of the previous count. I'm not sure how to account for that.