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guardian_learning了 to show that an action is complete
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_completion_with_%22le%22
Guardian:
猫说话了 (the cat spoke)
沈教授，结婚了吗 (Professor Shen, are you married?)
我已经答应了 (I've already given you my word)
My practice:
你太迟到了，我已经吃完了。
我们终于找到了解决。
她上周去了东京。
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_completion_with_%22le%22
Guardian:
猫说话了 (the cat spoke)
沈教授，结婚了吗 (Professor Shen, are you married?)
我已经答应了 (I've already given you my word)
My practice:
你太迟到了，我已经吃完了。
我们终于找到了解决。
她上周去了东京。
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Date: 2022-02-07 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-08 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-08 02:49 am (UTC)…and now I've clicked it and am staring in bafflement at "perfective aspect". What even is that, sounds like some kind of cake decoration.
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Date: 2022-02-08 03:23 am (UTC)XD I had to learn about the perfective aspect when I studied Russian and Greek, though lord help me if I remember much about it now. English doesn't have perfective/imperfective aspects at all, so... :P
If I remember, basically the perfective aspect of a verb shows an action that's completed or whole, versus imperfective which usually shows a continuous or repeated action -- so, like, you might have a single verb, but in the perfective aspect that verb would mean "to make a single rotation" and in the imperfective aspect it would mean "to spin."
I know exactly nothing about perfectives in Chinese, but I'm guessing this describes cases like where 找 vs. 找到了 changes the meaning from continuous to complete, whereas in English there are just totally separate verbs, "look for" vs. "find"...
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Date: 2022-02-08 04:19 am (UTC)见鬼了 LOL why is grammar.
…and this differs from past tense how, exactly? The implication of completeness rather than just time? (rhetorical question, I'll probably look it up later if I can remember to)
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Date: 2022-02-08 04:32 am (UTC)It does make sense to me that Chinese verbs would be described in terms of aspect rather than tense, because can't you often use the same verb structure you'd use for a past event to describe a future one? Like (to, uh, use an example I see a lot in the kinds of movies I watch >_>), "杀了他" could be either past tense or future tense (as the command "kill him!"), I think? And I think just 杀 without 了 can mean trying to kill someone, but not necessarily completing the act?
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Date: 2022-02-08 08:28 am (UTC)(I'm so glad I already had to wrap my head around aspect to some degree when I learned English, because German doesn't have it at all ...)
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Date: 2022-02-08 01:39 pm (UTC)... Though, agh, I just looked up 着 on Wiktionary and it seems like it actually has a lot of uses as well, including in combination with 了, so I'm even more confused now!
／o\
(I'm so glad I already had to wrap my head around aspect to some degree when I learned English, because German doesn't have it at all ...)
I was thinking I was glad I'd taken some Russian/Greek, because I never think about English having aspect! And I didn't realize German doesn't have it at all -- it's so fascinating how some languages have only aspect, and some have only tense, and some have both.
Barely on-topic, but I found this on the Wikipedia page on grammatical aspect, which I thought was interesting:
我来了 as "I'm here now" vs. "I'm coming"
...Wait, are you saying 我来了 can mean both of those things depending on which use of 了 is happening? :O
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Date: 2022-02-08 03:59 pm (UTC)Yes! I was very ??? at first over hearing things like "看着我" ...
着 Particle denoting the success or continuation of an action.
OMG, what. At least it's pronounced differently???? *flails helplessly*
"Ich war am Essen"
Yes, we do that, that's true! And like English, it can't be used in a command either. But I think it's closer to Chinese constructions with 在 (我在吃饭 = ich bin am Essen"), though I couldn't really explain why it feels that way. (Today is a day of great linguistic confusion!)
...Wait, are you saying 我来了 can mean both of those things depending on which use of 了 is happening? :O
Yes, apparently ... /o\
Usually clear from context, but still! Wah!
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Date: 2022-02-09 12:47 am (UTC)看着我 has a slightly different nuance to plain 看我 imo – like if you were doing a magic trick and wanted someone to keep looking only at you 看着我 would make sense and not 看我 (unless they weren't already looking at you to start with, in which case you're probably not a great magician).
And I also said this in the other comment but anyway, you can leave the other-pronunciation-meanings be for now! It's unhelpful and mostly just confusing to learn it all at once because they don't relate much to each other anyway. And 着 in particular is such a [bleep] who even needs THREE entire pronunciations!?
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Date: 2022-02-09 08:30 am (UTC)Hee! Thank you, that makes sense to me and does clarify things a little!
And 着 in particular is such a [bleep] who even needs THREE entire pronunciations!?
Who invented languages? They were a mistake.
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Date: 2022-02-09 10:46 am (UTC)oh my god. I'm just going to look away from this very useful dictionary entry and come back to it in, like, two years, when (hopefully) I will have enough of a background to understand better.
Who invented languages? They were a mistake.
...but fun ;)
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Date: 2022-02-09 11:03 am (UTC)(Definitely fun! Confusing fun, but fun. *g*)
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Date: 2022-02-09 02:35 pm (UTC)I kind of appreciate that Hong Kong does this weird thing and uses BOTH the simplified and the traditional characters for this one, with different meanings and pronunciations... except that they're not really consistent with the different pronunciations in Mandarin (the zháo, zhāo, and zhe meanings all share a single pronunciation in Canto and are written as 着, and the meanings "to wear clothes" and "famous"* are pronounced in two different ways and written as 著), and also people will occasionally decide to switch it up and use 着 for everything. :| (Which, incidentally, what even are these anyway, the "simplified" one has MORE STROKES, 12 versus the traditional character with 11???).
*And an aside: It looks like the meaning "famous" is pronounced as zhù in Mandarin and wasn't included in the pop-up list? So I think Mandarin actually has five pronunciations?
Who invented languages? They were a mistake.
XDDD
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Date: 2022-02-09 02:54 pm (UTC)Which, incidentally, what even are these anyway, the "simplified" one has MORE STROKES, 12 versus the traditional character with 11???
Maybe I'm miscounting somewhere, but I'm counting 11 strokes for both?
And an aside: It looks like the meaning "famous" is pronounced as zhù in Mandarin and wasn't included in the pop-up list? So I think Mandarin actually has five pronunciations?
The reason it's not included is that it's the pop-up for the simplified character, and apparently Mandarin uses the traditional one for that meanding ... Now my head hurts, LOL.
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:01 pm (UTC)Oh no, it gets even more confusing. XD From Wiktionary:
着 - "12 strokes in traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean, 11 strokes in mainland China"
著 - "12 strokes in traditional Chinese, 11 strokes in mainland China and Japanese, 13 strokes in Korean"
Either way, though, it's hardly simplified...
apparently Mandarin uses the traditional one
OH NO. XD
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:32 pm (UTC)I can answer the first one at least! The difference is due to the downwards long stroke being one continuous 丿 in simplified as below:
And yes, confirming the use of 著 for the "famous" meaning LOL. Another thing I hadn't even noticed until now because it's taught completely separate from 着.
ETA: WAIT no I figured out the 著 one too, just remembered the 草字头 (grass radical?) is written split up in trad hence the extra stroke:
…but not in Japanese. And who only knows what Korean is doing. Also for general reference, "[word] 笔画" (or 筆劃, if you're specifically looking for traditional) is the handy search for stroke order stuff.
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:42 pm (UTC)And yes, confirming the use of 著 for the "famous" meaning LOL.
Well, at least I'm used to that one! But this does make it feel like these should really just be regarded as separate characters and not a traditional/simplified pair. :P
"[word] 笔画" (or 筆劃, if you're specifically looking for traditional) is the handy search for stroke order stuff.
Thank you! I didn't know, and will definitely make use of this.
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:55 pm (UTC)not a traditional/simplified pair
ancestors: We did it! We've simplified the word!
us: You've made it more confusing is what you did! Look at it! It has anxiety. And an identity crisis!
Though to be fair any simplified dictionary would list them separately while trad ones would list them together, so Wiktionary conflating them is a bad example in this case.
And yeah it just occurred to me that it's not immediately obvious what the search term would be – unnoticed benefits of having learnt Chinese in Chinese lol. Maybe I should make a mini-list of "useful search tips" at some point… though that would require me to actually notice stuff like this first………
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Date: 2022-02-09 04:29 pm (UTC)Maybe I should make a mini-list of "useful search tips" at some point
This is maybe not quite on the same topic, but I'd love to know what the search term is for "fanfiction" in Chinese....
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Date: 2022-02-10 02:55 am (UTC)but the choice to treat all simplified characters as variants that merely link back to the traditional form is annoying even to me.
Yeah, especially since it can backfire sometimes (as in this case), even though I don't mind it most of the time…
I'd love to know what the search term is for "fanfiction" in Chinese....
同人小说/同人文, though you also see it abbreviated to 同人! Which I'm pretty sure is an adoption of "doujin" from Japanese, though I don't quite know whether it also applies to other non-fic fanwork or not.
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Date: 2022-02-09 04:13 pm (UTC)THANK YOU, that was bugging me, I couldn't figure out where I was going wrong with the stroke count!
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Date: 2022-02-10 01:14 pm (UTC)I've never really noticed the difference in that stroke (or more probably, just dismissed it as a font thing) so it was a baffling mystery to me too XD
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Date: 2022-02-09 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 02:42 pm (UTC)………………and now I'm staring in consternation because the dictionary just informed me that 着急 is supposedly zháo jí when I'm very certain I learned it as zhāo jí. oh well chalking that up to what's probably a mainland/Taiwan difference yet again
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Date: 2022-02-09 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 03:16 pm (UTC)Oh thank goodness I'm not imagining it then 😂
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Date: 2022-02-09 10:43 am (UTC)私を見て vs 私を見てて？ (Thank God you speak Japanese...)
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Date: 2022-02-09 02:29 pm (UTC)……y'know, it is very VERY hilarious that you should bring this up because I was literally thinking to myself last night that I don't really know the distinction between 待って and 待ってて, beyond vague context vibes. 真巧啊 XD
So now that I have looked it up, yes I think we're talking about the same thing! Though said searching has also just reminded me that 看我 by itself does sound kinda terse, and so 看看我(plus optional 嘛/啊 etc depending on the tone) might be preferable in casual situations to avoid sounding bossy/rude. A bit like 見なさい vs 見てね?
Anyway it's great fun for me too! Haven't really found anyone else going at both languages since my uni class (and obviously we were focusing only on Japanese then) and of course most internet people are doing just one or the other.
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Date: 2022-02-10 01:07 am (UTC)真巧！ With the caveat that I'm not a native speaker of Japanese, my sense is that 待って is like "stop doing that, wait" (in our ongoing drama, you say 待って to someone who's starting to walk away from you...), while 待ってて is closer to "wait (be waiting) for some amount of time while something happens (I'm looking up the information, hang on). (okay, I asked my 老公 who actually is a native speaker and who basically says the same). Sort of like 等等 vs 等一下, or does it not map that neatly？
Anyway it's great fun for me too! Haven't really found anyone else going at both languages since my uni class (and obviously we were focusing only on Japanese then) and of course most internet people are doing just one or the other.
The more languages involved, the more fun! (And usually more helpful in understanding.) I think scytale is studying Japanese too, not sure who else.
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Date: 2022-02-12 12:43 pm (UTC)Sort of like 等等 vs 等一下, or does it not map that neatly？
ちょっと考えてくるから待っててねw
Hmm. On the one hand there is some similarity… but on the other I don't think it's as strict a difference? The tone also matters a lot – in our hypothetical drama both 等等！ and 等一下！ could work if said with enough urgency, and conversely 你等等啊我去查看一下 said in a chill tone implies the sky isn't falling down. Probably the only actually-different one is 等着, which you'd expect more in longer-term-你愿意等着我吗？-type lines… but then again you can also use 等 by itself for this (see: 我在未来等你, actual drama title) and wow I already knew this but Chinese is such an unsystematic language on reflection.
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Date: 2022-02-09 12:39 am (UTC)seems like it actually has a lot of uses as well, including in combination with 了
I'd treat the other pronunciation meanings as completely separate and not worry about it for now, you'll drive yourself nuts trying to learn them together otherwise! Especially since they're not overlapping or closely related in general, 多音多义字 are considered tricky for a reason. Same goes for 了 as le/liao; one pronunciation is nearly always more useful to know than the other imo.
And yes to 我来了 though IRL you'd never confuse it with context. Both 来了来了！ (if you're on the way and someone's texted you "are you here yet??!" for the five billionth time) and 嗯，我来了。 (for our drama lead who no-one actually believed would come) work grammatically.
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Date: 2022-02-09 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 03:45 pm (UTC)A very literal expression too! Much sound much meaning, haha.
Not for the faint-hearted, though, I just googled up a list of supposedly-common ones and even I barely know half of these XD nobody test me on these because I'd just be straight-up blind guessing…
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Date: 2022-02-09 10:41 am (UTC)requiring figuring out the difference between 在 and 着, which I can understand for about five minutes at a time and then I lose track again...
(I'm so glad I already had to wrap my head around aspect to some degree when I learned English, because German doesn't have it at all ...)
and the thing is, they don't teach native speakers of English about aspect, I still only have the foggiest idea of it ;(
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Date: 2022-02-08 01:40 pm (UTC)杀了他
XD ah, an old favourite! Or more prosaically 忘了他, in the kind of dramas I don't watch. Can't decide how I'd describe half-killing somebody (gave up halfway, y'know, didn't feel like it today LOL) but I do see what you mean – 了 definitely doesn't work the same way as English past tense, for example.
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:58 pm (UTC)Heh, well, I was thinking about it because it's happened twice on the show I'm watching right now that someone has used 杀 in a way that seemed incomplete to me. In one case, the subtitles were "那你还杀不杀她？" which to me seems literally like "then are you still killing her?" like it's an ongoing process and not a single event. (In context I'd interpret it as something like "Then are you going to keep trying to kill her?") And then there's another place in the show where the speaker is saying "they already tried to kill me once," and the subtitles show it as "他们杀过我一次." The speaker is definitely not dead XD so I'm assuming 杀 can refer to an attempt even if it's not completed...
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Date: 2022-02-12 11:21 am (UTC)To be fair, without any context I would've placed my bets on the speaker for 他们杀过我一次 as being dead/undead LOL
But then again I also can't actually think of a better word to use there, sooooo I guess it works in the same way 我都死过一次了，还怕什么？ could work in-context for a character who is obviously not (yet) dead. (Someone tried, but it didn't stick. That's their backstory now.)
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Date: 2022-02-09 10:42 am (UTC)That makes sense! If you don't mind yet another Guardian quote, there's a point where Zhao Yunlan yells 杀了我！ which I think could be best translated in context as "Kill me and get it the fuck over with!".
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Date: 2022-02-09 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 03:58 pm (UTC)*checks off the box* yup! 忘了他, 忘了吧, et cetera… probably the subject of many an angsty song (删了吧 definitely is a song title at least)
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Date: 2022-02-09 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 10:38 am (UTC)English does have perfect tenses, which are...not the same thing...I think...but at least related? like, "I finished" (in the past) and "I have finished" (I finished in the past and the state of finishedness remains thus in the present, ie completed or whole, as you put it). Trouble is that the closest Chinese equivalent inside my imperfectly (lol) understanding head is not 了 but 过...
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Date: 2022-02-09 03:38 pm (UTC)Perfectives are definitely different, but yeah, as a native English speaker who had never even heard of "aspect" at all until I started studying other languages, I'm not sure if I'll ever fully get the hang of the distinction...
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Date: 2022-02-10 12:58 am (UTC)ooh, that's a very interesting point! Easier to remember, too.
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Date: 2022-02-08 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 10:35 am (UTC)Please consider me to be crying right along with you... ;)
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Date: 2022-02-08 03:05 am (UTC)我刚写了一大篇关于中英翻译的感想…… 或者应该说是，乱写一通吧，哈哈。
残念ながらalas, 解决 only works as a verb in Chinese! (Yes, I know, Japanese noun XD languages why.) 换成“办法”之类的词汇就OK了。no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 10:34 am (UTC)谢谢！ As they say (?) on the Internet, 今天我学了！seriously languages why.