第二十九天

[nnozomi]

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。

Comments

[trobadora]

Yeah, and you have a continuous aspect with 着, right?

(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 ...)

[grayswandir]

I think so! And now that you mention it, I feel like that explains why 着 usually makes sense to me for past and present events (was verbing, is verbing), but sort of confuses me in places like commands where English would never command somebody to "be verbing."

... 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!

着 Particle denoting the success or continuation of an action.

书找着了。 ― Shū zhǎo zháo le. ― The book was (successfully) found.
书找不着。 ― Shū zhǎo bù zháo. ― The book cannot be (successfully) found.

／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:

Although Standard German does not have aspects, many Upper German languages, all West Central German languages, and some more vernacular German languages do make one aspectual distinction, and so do the colloquial languages of many regions, the so-called German regiolects. [...] It is formed by the conjugated auxiliary verb sein ("to be") followed by the preposition "am" and the infinitive, or the nominalized verb [...] "Ich war am Essen" (I was eating, compared to the Standard German approximation: "Ich war beim Essen")

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

[trobadora]

I feel like that explains why 着 usually makes sense to me for past and present events (was verbing, is verbing), but sort of confuses me in places like commands

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!

[presumenothing]

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!?

[trobadora]

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

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.

[nnozomi]

zhao zhao zhe zhuo
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 ;)

[trobadora]

The pop-up dictionary is incredibly useful, but also sometimes it just adds to the all-around confusion.

(Definitely fun! Confusing fun, but fun. *g*)

[grayswandir]

Oh no. XD

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

[trobadora]

Haha, this is fascinating and even more confusing, and whoever came up with it should applaud themselves for that achievement ...

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.

[grayswandir]

I'm counting 11 strokes for both?

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

[presumenothing]

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.

[grayswandir]

This is great, thank you!

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.

[presumenothing]

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………

[grayswandir]

Yeah, I just think they need separate listings, I don't mean to deny the historical connection! But you're right, that's probably just a Wiktionary problem. (I've always used Wiktionary because it has more information about other dialects of Chinese and not just Mandarin, but the choice to treat all simplified characters as variants that merely link back to the traditional form is annoying even to me.)

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....

[presumenothing]

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.

[trobadora]

remembered the 草字头 (grass radical?) is written split up in trad

THANK YOU, that was bugging me, I couldn't figure out where I was going wrong with the stroke count!

[presumenothing]

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

[trobadora]

*cries*

[presumenothing]

………………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

[trobadora]

The popup dictionary does say it's pronounced zhāo jí in Taiwan!

[presumenothing]

Oh thank goodness I'm not imagining it then 😂

[nnozomi]

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
私を見て　vs 私を見てて？ (Thank God you speak Japanese...)

[presumenothing]

……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.

[nnozomi]

I don't really know the distinction between 待って and 待ってて, beyond vague context vibes.　真巧啊
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.

[presumenothing]

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.

[presumenothing]

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.

[trobadora]

Oh, 多音多义字 is a very useful expression to know!

[presumenothing]

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…

[nnozomi]

Yeah, and you have a continuous aspect with 着, right?
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 ;(