User Comments - auntie68

Posted on: Morning at the Office

@username234: You asked why the expansion sentence "今天早上你去哪儿了？" is translated by CPOD as "Where are you going this morning?", rather than "Where did you go this morning?"

The short answer is that the 了 in that sentence is an inceptive 了, not a perfective 了. Too complicated for me to explain adequately, and the corresponding section in the CPOD Grammar section is still under construction (--> under particles of aspect and modal particles).

But perhaps you might find Wikipedia's rather technical explanation (under "Chinese Grammar") useful. There might be a QingWen on this?

To rephrase the expansion sentence with a perfective 了, you would change the word order: 今天早上你去了哪儿？ That would have the sense of, "Where did you go this morning?" 

Don't worry, this is something which I find that many learners seem to be unaware of. But it's worth knowing. I won't expand further because I think I've answered this same question 3 of 4 times before on various threads, and that is really the job of CPOD teachers, not a fellow user like me. Good luck with that inceptive 了! It's useful knowledge, and your Chinese will sound more natural for it.

Posted on: Morning at the Office

P/s: May this Auntie add that in those days, "Chinese" had more than only four different tones, it was more like 7 or 8 different tones for many major dialects. You can still hear the relics of these ancient tones in living  languages/dialects such as Cantonese and Teochew (Chaozhou dialect)... When I speak Cantonese, I don't dare think about the tones, there are just so many of them! ;-)

Posted on: I Want This

Oh, okay. Thanks, mattwhyndham. In a way, we seem to represent two sides of the same coin. I don't post as many substantial, specific, answers as I used to, simply because maybe only 20% of them are acknowledged.

Only this morning, I started typing out a few examples from my Little Dictionary in response to a very good, specific question on "总是 vs 老实 , but when I realized that I had answered the very same question before, I aborted my typing and just went to do something else. There's just no way of knowing whether anything I type is useful in any way, so these days I try to hold back in order to avoid wasting my time. Guess this is a common problem.

Posted on: I Want This

@mattwhyndham, dongni, and howard97: I hear you. For this thread, at least, I can't be blamed for creating "noise". But one question I have for you is: Have you ever tried asking a serious, specific question on one of these noisy threads before? What was the response like? I'm just asking, I'm not pre-supposing the answer. 

Posted on: Ping Pong Nation

Hello again. I hope that anybody reading this will be lenient towards me for being so, so excited and emotional (when one comes from a very small country, this happens sometimes..,)

Well, SGP's Li Jiawei squeaked into the (women's singles) semifinals, scheduled for tomorrow morning. But the draw puts her against Zhang Lining, the world top seed who came away from the Athens Olympics with individual and team gold medals.

We're going to get spanked tomorrow, in the semi-finals. That's for sure. Realistically, even a bronze medal is probably out of reach.

But tomorrow morning, this Auntie is going to be cheering for Li Jiawei! LJW deserves to be cheered on like a champ by Singaporeans, because that's what she is. Unlike many of the "imported" Chinese-born stars paddling for various countries, JLW has been a Singapore citizen since 1999, which is a long time to be away from China, in table tennis terms.

I'll be cheering for the China team too (after Jiawei), and hope that the home crowd will show love to our girl too! Getting even this far is unimaginable for us... we're just totally grateful to be there.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team

@changye: Thanks! The second sense of 尽管 (ie "feel free to") is a recent discovery for me. My dream is to practice my Mandarin by hearing somebody say to me, "你尽管喝吧, we filled the fridge with Guinness Stout this morning and we need somebody to help us drink it up!"... Again, thanks.

Posted on: A Chinese-Style Contradiction

@zhangdawei: No, to call it "the strongest spear in the world" definitely does violence to the sense of the story as it is taught to Chinese children (naughty CPOD):

楚国有个卖矛和盾的人，夸他的盾说：“我的盾很坚固，任何武器都刺不破它。”又夸他的矛说：“我的矛很锐利，没有什么东西穿不透的。”有人质问他：“拿你的矛去刺你的盾，结果会怎样？”那人便答不上话来了。本来嘛，坚不可破的盾和无坚不穿的矛是不能同时并存的.

Although this is only a heavily abridged version found randomly on the Internet, the nature of the salesman's claims is clear. This extract is written in fairly clear and simple Mandarin, so maybe you could have a go at it, and have fun while you're at it!

Posted on: A Chinese-Style Contradiction

@xiaohu: This is just a very well-known fable. The traditional version of the story sets the story in the 楚国 period. The most famous versions of any of these fables have been print for many centuries; any Chinese person with even a minimal level of education would be aware of the various editions eg., 玉照新志, 后汉书, etc etc, just to pluck a few titles out of the air (with no particular connection with the 自相矛盾 story). The former collection was first published in the Song Dynasty, if I'm not mistaken.

@zhangdawei: I think it will make more sense to you if you try to imagine a salesman trying to sell "The Shield Which No Spear On Earth Can Pierce!", at the same time as, "The Spear Which Can Penetrate Any Shield on Earth!". The translation, "strongest spear" is a poor one. Hope that helps!

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 2: Welcome to the Team

Hi xiaolanolga. I feel a bit nervous offering you a Mandarin explication, because I know that you aced the HSK, but there is a little note in my Little Dictionary concerning where the 尽管 goes:

"尽管“一般用在复句的前一个分句，可以出现在主语前也可以出现在主语后，后一分句中常有”但是／可是／却“等配合。

I understand this to mean that the 尽管 belongs in the initial clause, but it doesn't matter whether the 尽管 comes before or after the subject in that clause. This is a loose translation because Chinese grammatical concepts are so different from Indo-European ones.

Looks to me like the rule is much simpler that it is for, say, 不管，which is a relief! HTH

Posted on: Calling a Supplier for a Quote

!!!! That was so witty. You just made my day, thanks!