第二年第十二天

[nnozomi]

卯兔迎春，新年快乐！祝大家健健康康平平安安的一年！

(some New Year words coming 兔morrow)

语法
Simple (?) direction complements = verb of going (??) + 来/去 (top of page)
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Direction_complement

词汇
不一定, uncertain, not necessarily; 一定, certain 不一定 bùyīdìng, uncertain, not necessarily; 一定 yīdìng, certain
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-2-word-list/

Guardian:
我先下去看一眼， I’m going down to take a look
好了，可以进来了, all right, you can come in now
这一场仗不一定非要打得头破血流, this situation doesn’t have to turn to bloodshed

Me:
外面太冷了吧，我不想出去。
因为用汉字写，就不一定是汉语的。

Comments

[grayswandir]

新年快乐！

You might be wondering how the directional distinction between 来 and 去 works when you're talking about yourself moving. You can't move away from or towards yourself, so should it be 来 or 去? The answer is to look at the context of the movement you're talking about.

...And then there is no explanation of what kind of context they mean or how it would help you! XD What. They say:

Are you telling someone you'll see them tomorrow? Similar to English, in Chinese you'd say something like "I'll come and see you tomorrow."

But then every example they give for talking about yourself with a directional complement uses 去, including the one they translate to English as "come" ("I'll come up in a few minutes." = "我一会儿就上去。")

My instinct is that you'd usually use 来 for motion toward the person you're addressing, like "I'll come to your house" (versus "I'll go to her house"), but that once you add a complement like 上/下/出/进 then you use 去 instead? Like in the above example, "I'll come up to see you" is 上去, but I think if it was just "I'll come see you" it would be 来? I'm 100% guessing from intuition/what I feel like I've heard, though...

[trobadora]

I wonder if it could be more 来 for moving towards a person and more 去 for moving towards a place? Or maybe I'm talking total nonsense here, LOL.

[presumenothing]

Didn't click 去 the article but offhand from your last bit, if I were calling someone a couple floors above me, I'd probably use 上去 in most situations unless whatever's upstairs is someplace both me and the listener have reason to view as going back to? Like, "hi I'm here to 拜年, coming up in a bit" is 上去 definitely, but "I'm seeing off a client downstairs, be back to our office (which is upstairs) in a bit" then either works – I'd probably pick 上来 but that's just habit.

[nnozomi]

新年快乐！
My instinct is that you'd usually use 来 for motion toward the person you're addressing, like "I'll come to your house" (versus "I'll go to her house"), but that once you add a complement like 上/下/出/进 then you use 去 instead? Like in the above example, "I'll come up to see you" is 上去, but I think if it was just "I'll come see you" it would be 来?
Oh dear. My hard-won Japanese instinct is something like “来 is to where the speaker is, 去 is to where the speaker is not," but what you're saying about 来 also seems to make sense, and 来 is so damn ubiquitous in Mandarin that it's hard to sort out the actual "come" meaning from, like, "I'll do it" and so on. Short answer, I don't know!

[tinny]

I have nothing useful to add to this... we had that direction complement in the Chinese course we did last year, and there were always cases where it didn't work as expected.

Especially if you're talking about "taking things somewhere" you have to distinguish if you're taking them "out of sight" or just "moving them a bit" or whatever. It confused me more than it helped me.

My personal gut feeling about movement of yourself is similar to presumenothing's below. When I move, I always 去 unless I return/go back to somewhere/someone, then I would use 来. I suspect both are okay? That's also judging from the grammar site not being 100% consistent, itself.