vocab - 睡觉 and 睡着

chris

Agree with bodawei, this is exactly how I think of it as well. I do, however, find those differents sounds (jiao and zhao) extremely difficult to tell apart (similar to my problems with xiang and shang at full, native-speaker speed).

bodawei

Hi watyamacallit

'it is not zhe'

I did consider the possibility of either shuizhao or shui zhe ... and he may be talking about the former, but I do think that 睡着 is either shuizhao or shui zhe depending on context.

I can't think of any reason to discount the possibility of 睡着 shui zhe - Why do you think 'it is not zhe'?

podster

I had the same question because it came up in something I was reading recently. Also, I have trouble when listening discriminating between sounds like "jiao" and "zhao."

According to the dictionary, 睡着is pronounced shui4zhao2 and means "to fall asleep. 着by itself, when it is pronounced zhao2, can have the meaning of fall asleep. In the story I was reading it definitely meant fall asleep.

The other word, 睡觉 shui4jiao4 means to sleep, and each of its two characters by itself means sleep. Actually the first character, 睡, means "to sleep" and the second character, is the noun for sleep, so you could think of it as meaning "sleep a sleep."

I'm still curious about the context issue. As far as I know, most verbs can take 着 (pronounced zhe, neutral tone) to indicate continuing action. So, for example, could you translate 他在床上睡着 alternately as "he fell asleep on the bed" or "he is sleeping on the bed" depending on which pronunciation of 着is presumed by the reader?

I looked up 睡觉 in the Chinese Pod glossary to see examples, and it looks like the way to say "is sleeping" is 在睡觉，so maybe if I wanted to say "he is sleeping on the bed" I should say 他在床上在睡觉。

chris

I'm pretty sure there was a qw on this at some point. I will try to find it and post a link later

podster

Chris,

Thanks. I remember John saying "sleep a sleep" and I think also talking about some other cases of such words. But I don't remember anything about differentiating 睡觉 / 睡着。 According to the Cpod search function there are no lessons for either term, but maybe its included in a broader Qing Wen.

podster

maybe in one of these?

Qing Wen - The 着 (zhe) Chronicles: Actions in Progress

Qing Wen - The 着 (zhe) Chronicles: Verbs as States

Qing Wen - The 着 (zhe) Chronicles: How We Verb

chris

I was thinking more one on separable verbs during which I think the team gave shui a good going over

watyamacallit

Perhaps shuìzhe can be used - I'm not sure.

But it seems to me that 睡 already refers to a continuing state.

And shuìzháo has come up in a number of dialogs and comes up in a dictionary search.

But we'll have to wait for one of the team for a definitive answer.

smallville

in my study of chinese, i've actually come across three different ways of pronouncing "着" ：　1) zhe （如：　放着，坐着，有着等）; 2) zhao2 （如：着急，睡着）; and zhuo2 （如：着想）.

it's my experience that when the character "睡" is combined with the character "着“ the characters are usually pronounced "shui4zhao2". however, it may in fact be possible for the characters to be read "shui4zhe" as previously stated above. now, when the characters are pronounced "shui4zhao2" it's my belief that the character "着“　takes on the meaning of "to be able/unable to do something" ［for example: 买（得／不）着；用（得／不）着］，much like the particle "了" ［read "liao3　and seen in the characters "决定（得／不）了“　and "说服(得／不)了"］. as such "睡着" can be written as "睡得着“ (to be able to sleep)　or "睡不着" (to be unable to sleep) . Also, in addition to being written "睡（得／不）着"; you can also say/write "睡不着觉“ which means something similar to if not the same as "睡不好觉"　(to have trouble sleeping).

hope this helps.

P.s. i learned about ”睡不着觉“　while i was studying Chinese in Taiwan so it might be more commonly used there than in China.