User Comments - Right-Wingnut

Right-Wingnut

Posted on: How Long Have You Been in Shanghai?

January 23, 2013 at 12:14 AM

Just to clarify:

We can say 'I studied today for three hours' or 'Today I studied for three hours'. (That is what my example sentence says by the way, in case you didn't realise - actually that's not quite correct due to the second 了, but its close enough for now).

In any language there needs to be some way to separate time locations from time durations. We do this in English using the preposition 'for' - we just know that what comes after 'for' is a duration. We then have the luxury of putting the location in time before or after the verb, as there can be no confusion. In fact, we can even put the duration before the verb, as in "For three hours today, I studied", although this sounds a little stilted.

As Chinese doesn't use a preposition to indicate time duration, the ordering of the sentence is critical. A Chinese speaker just knows that if he hears a time phrase before the verb then he is hearing WHEN the event happened. If he hears one after the verb he knows it is either a DURATION (for how long) or a FREQUENCY (how often) - I didn't mention frequency last time.

As an example of a frequency phrase:

我今天去了三次。"Today I went three times", which is almost the same word order in both languages. In fact "I went today three times" just sounds wrong in English. So perhaps you should first practise sentences indicating a frequency, as they sound more natural to the English speaker's ear, and then extend by analogy to sentences indicating a duration.

Of course, the problem with your original question is that 多久 is a question word. And whereas in English we change the word order to mark a question, in Chinese the phrase 多久 is merely substituted for the time duration without changing the word order.

Posted on: How Long Have You Been in Shanghai?

January 22, 2013 at 11:24 PM

Time phrases come before the verb when they indicate a 'location' in time, ie. WHEN did something happen.

They go at the end of the sentence when they indicate a 'duration' of time, ie. FOR HOW LONG did something happen.

For example: 我今天学了三个小时了。

This has two time phrases. The first 今天 answers 'when'. The second 三个小时 answers 'how long'.

Posted on: A Visit From Superman

January 22, 2013 at 11:10 AM

Does your daughter have an account here on ChinesePod?

Or perhaps some of your comments here are actually hers !

Posted on: Making Soup

January 22, 2013 at 3:00 AM

Wow, I've now found 2 areas where Australians side with Americans rather that the British.

1. Eat soup rather than drink (although perhaps I might 'drink' a mug of instant soup).

2. Britain has the public/private school idea back to front (at least by my concept of what public/private means).

I don't have time to list all the areas where Americans have it wrong

[Because of course Australian English is the standard :) ]

Posted on: Goodbye to a Co-worker

January 21, 2013 at 7:26 AM

If you were out with friends and bumped into a workmate, would you introduce him by saying "This is my colleague/co-worker/workmate John"? I think I would be more likely to say "This is John. We work together". In this situation I think I would reserve 'my' for family members only. For example,"This is my (beeping) mother-in-law Beryl". (Names changes to protect the 'innocent'). I guess I would also say "This is my dentist Lok-Man", but I don't think I've ever run into my dentist while out.

When I think about it, I don't think the word 'colleague' has ever passed my lips.