User Comments - chenggwo

Posted on: Tone Rule: Changes for 'bu'

"This question isn't pertinent to actually speaking Chinese, but I'm curious, and someone has to ask it. How did it get like this!? I mean I understand (more or less) why tones evolved, but how did 不 get these tone rules?"

Steve E,

In any language, the most common words are the most likely to have exceptions. So since it is a little awkward to say two fourth tones in a row, bu4 avoids that awkwardness. Furthermore, I think all the tones change depending on what comes before of after them. But most of them are too subtle to be explained with a simple tone change rule like this. This is one of the reasons, I think, it is necessary to learn Chinese phrase by phrase, not word by word. Again, the exceptions are located in the common phrases that we learn first. Later on, the more advance vocabulary will be more regular.

In English, the most irregular verb is "be". Again, because it is the most common. In Chinese the common phrases are probably spoken automatically, without breaking them down word by word, so neither should we.

Posted on: Please speak slowly

"Wo3 Zhong1 wen2 shuo1 de bu4 hao3"

OOPS!!! bu4 does not change to second tone in front of a third tone, only in front of another fourth tone, I believe.

See

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/tone-rule-changes-for-bu

Posted on: Please speak slowly

The podcast omits discussing the "de" for a very good reason. Its use is almost impossible for an English speaking newbie to understand, even though it is a very common contruction in Chinese. In this context it is the most natural way for a Chinese person to say it.

"Ni3 ke3yi3 shuo1 de man4 yi1dian3 ma?"

"nǐ kěyǐ màn màn shuō ma"

The second way is the most natural way for us, but is incorrect in the sense that it is not the most natural way for a Chinese speaker to put it. The way I think of using "de" is that it changes a verb to a different part of speech, but I don't try to understand which part of speech that would be.

I learned "de" while studying Cantonese (duk1). Translated to Mandarin, this is the phrase I learned.

"Wo3 Zhong1 wen2 shuo1 de bu2 hao3"

"I don't speak Chinese well."

Which is an excellent phrase to know considering that saying "I only speak a little Chinese." can be taken to mean that you are already fluent.

Posted on: Aren't you.... （不是.... 吗）

Boy, this is a fantastic lesson for a Newbie on the verge of becoming an Elementary level student. This is good for any level. If all I learned was how to use bu shi, it would be enough.

bu shi jung gwo yan ma?

Posted on: American Breakfast

Regarding the image: Americans do not eat hamburgers on a Poppy-seed bun. Sesame-seed or Plain is the standard.

Posted on: Not on purpose

OK, I am wrong. Studying Mandarin Tone Sandhi over the internet, I found that bu is treated as a special case.

Posted on: Where Do You Live?

Making a small effort learning to write the characters resulted in a large improvement in reading. Helpful things that I learned were 1) There are only about thirty basic stokes that make up all the characters. 2) There are 215 radicals from which (together with some of the stokes) all other characters are formed. Know this makes the characters look more like letters of the alphabet if you will and less like cute little drawings. All the characters have been abstracted into a limited number of strokes and this helps both writing and reading the characters. Knowing a few things about the language that any native speaker would know helps fluency with speaking the language as well. In my case, I am learning more than one dialect. So I trace when the characters the Cantonese use for their spoken language is the same as Mandarin and when it is not.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hunan

I am excited about this Hungry Traveler series, I hope to see another one soon.

Posted on: Where Do You Live?

alwingate, I am a Newbie and I am not studying the characters right now. I am only responding to research that indicates that people who do not study Chinese writing never become fluent in spoken Chinese. Well, I believe that very much. For one thing, I want to sort out when homonyms are really different words or when they are the same word used in different contexts. So I pay attention to what the more advanced students are saying even if I don't understand it all. Believe me, that is what language learning is all about. That is what makes it so frustrating: Paying attention to what you cannot understand fully. Eventually we all catch on just through the exposure, even when we think we are not learning much. What I did is I googled 'stroke order' and found gif animations for the most common characters. It goes like this, writing even just a few of the characters helps you recognize them when you see them better, reading them helps you sort out homonyms, sorting out homonyms helps you speak more confidently. Also, if you ever go to China, you want to read some of the signs, don't you?

Posted on: Not on purpose

I thought it applied to any two syllables that are tied together to form a word. That is, if a pause can be placed between two words, there will be no tone sandi transformation, but otherwise there will be. I think of the negation words bu and mei as prefixes rather than words in there own right like un- in unselfish. However, I never did study tone sandi for Mandarin properly. I'll try Wikipedia. What I am saying, Hito, is that I am hesitant to believe that bu is the only example of a fourth tone becoming a second tone in front of another fourth tone. Tone Sandi is one of the topics that need to go into the grammar on this site for the paying customer. I am not one, though.