User Comments - jjinfrance

Posted on: A Little Bit About 一点儿

If you use yī diǎnr, it's not wrong. But orally, we pronounced it yì diǎnr because when yī (一) is in front of a word of first/second/third tone, it's pronounced as fourth tone; when yī (一) is in front of a word of fourth tone, it's pronouned as second tone. For example,

一天 yì tiān - one day

一瓶 yì píng - a bottle of

一点 yì diǎn - a little bit of

一块 yí kuài - a chunk of

This changement of sound applies to bù (不) too.

Posted on: 世界末日？

果真是有志者事竟成，难怪你的中文那么好！

Posted on: How to Start a Conversation with Chinese People

To a stranger, I would just say ni3hao3.

Only when I know someone personally, I would care about what he's up recently.

Posted on: How to Start a Conversation with Chinese People

Interesting! I have never thought about why it was translated this way. I always associated "How are you?" with " 你好吗？" because it was the translation in my junior high school textbook. Now that you mention it, I guess the textbook writers put it this way because "how are you" was the counterpart of "你好" and as it was in the form of a question, the "吗" was thus added.

Posted on: How to Start a Conversation with Chinese People

The reason that your teacher use "你好吗?" with you is because they already know some foreign friends and know this is the way English speakers use to greet people.

你好吗？is the Chinese translation of the first English phrase we learn, so young people who have received English education can accept this way of greeting. However, if you greet my parents or my grandparents by asking 你好吗, they would be puzzled. They may figure it out and then asnwer you 我很好, but it's just not a typical way they greet each other.

Ｉuse a lot of 马马虎虎 with my students too because I know they like this phrase a lot. I usually tell them we use more often 还好／还可以 in its place, but most students tend to remember only 马马虎虎。It really takes a long time for them to transfer to 还可以, so to facilate daily conversation, I use 马马虎虎 before they are used to understand 还好。

Posted on: Cold Weather Is Coming

"A native English speaker usually uses which tone for the majority of speach?" None. All the four tones are usually used randomly in the wrong place.

It's very often that Chinese learners pronounce the tones correctly while they speak really really slowly, but once they speak fast, the tones are completely lost. So the only way to speak the tones correctly is to pay attention all the time. It's not easy, I know, but it's the cruel reality.

As a French learner, I would like to compare the use of the tones in Chinese to the use of the conjugation in French. My experience is that I can conjugate the sentence correctly when I speak slowly, but when I have daily conversation with my friends, I can only use any verb tense that comes to my mind instantly. Unfortunately, the verb tense that pops up at that instant is seldom correct. I guess that's how a learner of Chinese experience when they try to convers with Chinese in a casual way.

Posted on: Chinese Zodiac Birth Year

I guess here the guy said " The year of the tiger really is lucky" (虎年运气不错嘛！）is to make contrast to 你牛年运气不好 (You got so much bad luck in the year of the Ox. Now it's the year of the Tiger, and you begin to have good luck.)

Posted on: 考试制度

To zhou_rui,

I haven't finished reading your comments, but I really need to say this to you: "我警告你" is a phrase for threating. We use it only when we are very angry and are ready to take an extreme action. For example, "我警告你，你再跟我唱反调，我就把你的文章都删掉。

I think you just want to "warn" peterleon74 that you have a lot to say. In this case, you may use "小心" or "我先声明", it would be more appropriate.

Posted on: The Black Spectrum of Meaning

If you just want to know the usage of "ne" in comparison with "ma", it's simple: "ne" can only be attached to a interrogative sentence, whereas "ma" can transform a declarative sentence into an interrogative sentence.

For example, you can translate "are you a student?" into Chinese by saying

nǐ shì xuéshēng ma?

nǐ shìbúshi 4xuéshēng ne? (Notice that "nǐ shìbúshi 4xuéshēng" is already a question in its own right.)

The former one is a simple question to ask whether you are a student; the latter one hints that the person thinks you are a student, but s/he is not sure, so he uses the "ne" question to ask for confirmation.

Other examples:

tā shì wáng xiānshēng (He is Mr. Wang) => tā shì wáng xiānshēng ma? (=tā shìbúshì wáng xiānsheng?) ( Is he Mr. Wang?)

tā shìbúshì wáng xiānsheng ne? (Is he Mr. Wang?) (Asking for confirmation)

tā shì shéi? (Who is he?) (Tell me who he is)

tā shì shéi ne? (Who is he?) (I wonder who this person is)

*tā shì shéi ma? (Wrong sentence, "ma" can't be attached to an interrogative sentence)

Posted on: The Black Spectrum of Meaning

Hi Changye,

Probably we can use 黑漆漆的头发 to describe someone's hair, but for me, it doesn't sound like a compliment because when I think of something that is 黑漆漆, I just think that it's so dark that we can't see anything. For example, 那个房间黑漆漆的，真可怕。or 他的头发黑漆漆的，没什么光泽。I would say 乌溜溜的头发 to describe "glossy black hair."