User Comments - John
John
Posted on: Perfume Shopping
October 11, 2011 at 7:08 AMThat's right. So similar in meaning, yes, but different in usage.
适合 (verb): to be suited to/for
合适 (adjective): suitable
Posted on: Perfume Shopping
October 11, 2011 at 7:06 AMActually, 柚子 are not the same as grapefruit. 柚子 are pomelo, and as you say, they have a much thicker skin than grapefruit. (But are there pomelo-scented perfumes?)
Posted on: Perfume Shopping
October 11, 2011 at 7:03 AMOops, sorry; I read too quickly and misread 或是 as 或者.
或者 can be reduced to 或, so 或是 is the same as 或者是, which is a use of 或者.
Posted on: The Working Hours Policy
October 11, 2011 at 6:52 AMThank you! Your 拍马屁 skills are also commendable.
Posted on: Networking Event
October 11, 2011 at 6:50 AMYou've gotta!
Posted on: Perfume Shopping
October 11, 2011 at 1:25 AM或者 (huòzhe) is for "or" statements. 还是 (háishi) is for "or" questions.
Posted on: Housekeeping!
October 8, 2011 at 3:21 AM想 can definitely make a sentence less harsh (compared to 要), but you have to be careful how you use it. Note the following patterns:
要 + Verb (want to Verb)
想 + Verb (would like to Verb)
想要 + Verb (would like to Verb)
要 + Noun (want a Noun)
想要 + Noun (would like a Noun)
Note that there is no "想 + Noun" pattern. It's not that it doesn't exist, though. It's that it's used to mean something else:
想 + Noun (to think about Noun, to miss Noun)
Make sense?
Posted on: Plane Ticket Prices
October 8, 2011 at 3:16 AMIt's not grammatically incorrect to use xūyào, but it definitely doesn't sound as natural as just using yào.
I think maybe it's because it's a price that someone is asking. It's not that they NEED the money from you; it's just business. And the price is what they WANT for the goods or services they're selling.
Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 3: A Call for Innovation
October 8, 2011 at 3:12 AM我这个人 usually precedes a statement about oneself that is somewhat critical.
You'll probably see it even more often in the pattern 你这个人, which is naturally much more likely to be even more critical (since it's not about yourself).
A typical example:
你这个人不讲道理！
Posted on: The Glorious了(le): Part 1
October 11, 2011 at 7:28 AMI can see how you'd draw that inference, but thinking in terms of tenses for Chinese doesn't really work. It's because Chinese has grammatical aspect, not grammatical tense.
One of the functions of 了 is to mark the perfective aspect (this is the first usage mentioned in the podcast, "了1"). This "perfect" (completed) nature is the same "perfect" that you refer to when you say "past perfect" or "present perfect" or even "imperfect." But it's still not a tense; the grammatical concept of "past perfect" is actually a mix of past tense and perfective aspect. Chinese only has the latter.
To answer your question, though, sentences in the preterite can often be translated using 了1 in Chinese, and some sentences in the imperfect (especially of the "used to" variety) can often be translated into Chinese using 以前, so there is a correlation, but it's definitely not a reliable one-to-one correspondence!
In general, I find it much better not to try to apply the grammatical tense concepts from European languages to Chinese. (But I can sympathize; I studied Spanish before studying Chinese too.)