Why

NickZhao
 April 17, 2015, 11:52 PM posted in General Discussion

I noticed that "why" sometimes begins the sentence, but all other question words are placed at the end. Why is this?

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veronique21
 April 18, 2015, 09:18 AM

Hello Captain ! I don't have the precise answer to your question but, actually, many question words are not at the beginning of the sentence.

who (谁) and where (哪儿) can be at the beginning or at the end
谁今天来看你 ?
他是谁 ?
你去哪儿 ?
你在哪儿工作 ?

But: when (什么时候), how (怎么) are at the beginning of the sentence.
你什么时候去中国 ?
他怎么去上班 ?

The other how (the "quality" one, 怎么样) is in general at the end. 
今天怎么样 ?

Cheers !

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NickZhao

Thanks, I think that helps. I don't read Hanzi too well, but I think I have the general idea. For example, I know that "shen2 me" in asking "Ni3 zuo4 shen2 me" follows the verb and lands at the end. Tricky syntax!

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Gwilym-ChinesePod

Here's the pinyin for veroniques helpful examples. 

 

Who (sheí) and where (nǎ'er) can be at the beginning or at the end sheí jīntiān lái kàn nǐ?Tā shì sheí?Nǐ qù nǎ'er?Nǐ zài nǎ'er gōngzuò?But: When (shénme shíhòu), how (zěnme) are at the beginning of the sentence. Nǐ shénme shíhòu qù zhōngguó? Tā zěnme qù shàngbān? The other how (the"quality" one, zěnme yàng) is in general at the end. Jīntiān zěnme yàng?Cheers!

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veronique21

Thanks, Gwilym. BTW, I've got a question: why "nǎ'er" and not "nǎr" ?

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NickZhao

Thank you Gwilym for shedding some light on that. Thank you again veronique21 also for your help in this little grammatical matter. 

 

 

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Gwilym-ChinesePod

I think it's just a quirk of google translate.  I like google translate because it's easy to copy and past big chunks of pinyin without casuing lots of formatting issues. I believe the extra ['] shows that the two words kind of merge in to one syllable.  I would say the correct one is your version, since the    兒化音 is just an [r] rather than an [er] when with other characters. 

Users feel free to enducate me if you have other insights. 

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E5%85%92

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Nabeshima120

I believe the pinyin is er because if you were typing characters and wrote nar, you would not get  哪儿 you would get suggestion for   那人  check for yourselves. I learned this when I was learning strictly from a textbook and spent a good 20 minutes trying to find out how to create the character 儿 with the keyboard -_-

 

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veronique21

Gwilym, I forgot that you're in Taiwan and I should have written 哪里, 对吧 ? The 儿 (兒) is very (北京话 (北京話) ! 呵呵