Is this right: 你们去旅游啊、跟家里人团聚啊、有别的事啊、没什么特别事啊？
xiaophil
February 22, 2010 at 01:38 AM posted in I Have a QuestionI just posted here the following question in 中文吧:
你们去旅游啊、跟家里人团聚啊、有别的事啊、没什么特别事啊？
Did I do this right? I was trying to say in a 'flowing manner' this:
Did you go traveling, get together with your family, did something else, didn't do much of anything?
I'm interested in finding out any mistakes, but I am most interested in knowing if 啊 can be used the way I used it above.
orangina
February 23, 2010 at 09:01 AM
Here it is again... I removed it because there is quite a bit in the comments section questioning it's validity. I was hoping to find a more reputable link. But it is entertaining!
zhenlijiang
February 23, 2010 at 08:35 AM
Orangina I was just reading at the link you gave--thanks (and sorry to see it gone ...)!
changye
February 23, 2010 at 08:31 AM
HI zhenlijiang
A question mark and an exclamation mark gradually began to be used after the colloquial Chinese movement (白话运动) in the early 20th century.
cassielin
February 23, 2010 at 06:53 AM
xiaophil,
我想你是要问：“你（们）去旅行了吗？你（们）和家人团聚了吗？你（们）做了一些特别的事吗？还是没有做什么特别的事呢？”
lujiaojie
February 23, 2010 at 07:06 AM
你们去旅游啊？
跟家里人团聚啊？
There are not real questions, just “打招呼”。
"有别的事啊？and 没什么特别的事啊？" 啊 in these two sentences is question word, like 吗。
For "Did you go traveling, get together with your family, did something else, didn't do much of anything? " you can say:
你去旅行了吗？ 跟家人团聚了吗？ 有没有什么特别的事呢？
xiaophil
February 23, 2010 at 07:03 AM
Thanks. I was trying to turn something easy into something hard.
JasonSch
February 23, 2010 at 05:17 AM
I can't speak to the actual linguistic rules concerning 啊, but in my experience, it's used mostly for emphasis (listing things, surprise, rhetorical questions) and not usually when asking a question like this.
I think maybe 吧 would be more appropriate here?
I could be wrong though! It's possible that there are less common uses that I'm not familiar with. These are just some thoughts off the top of my head.
changye
February 23, 2010 at 05:14 AM
Can you use the "啊" (for "flowing manner") in an interrogative sentence?
zhenlijiang
February 23, 2010 at 08:00 AMThis brings to my mind another question, about punctuation--for how long has the 问号 question mark been in use in Chinese? The 叹号 exclamation mark?
And sorry this isn't about Chinese but where did the question mark originate? What are some current languages that do without it?