第一百二十七天

[nnozomi]

语法
one 了 with multiple actions
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_completion_with_%22le%22
(bottom of page—a couple of bits in the middle skipped)

词汇
歌，song (also 唱歌, sing) 歌 gē，song (also 唱歌 chàng gē, sing)
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-1-word-list/

Guardian:
她母亲带着她嫁过去就去世了, her mother brought her with her when she married and then passed away
你没说不能唱歌啊, you didn’t say I couldn’t sing
(returning to our 能 vs 会 discussion, I feel like Shen Wei could legitimately respond with 对，我没说你不能唱歌，但我要说你不会唱歌, given Zhao Yunlan’s singing)

Me:
我去洗衣店一边等待一边工作了。
他唱歌唱得太好，但是这首歌的音域对他歌声比较高。

Comments

[presumenothing]

刚看到深深的新歌预告，而且还是连续两首～ 看来我明天后天就可以等着听歌了～ 好幸福～～～

Also, the identification of so many seemingly separate use cases for 了 continues to boggle the mind…

[nnozomi]

恭喜你新歌预告！真幸福啊～

I have no idea if it's easier to master 了 in all these separate little bites or if there's one comprehensive explanation somewhere, but since the a-little-at-a-time explanations are there we might as well use them. Really I suspect it's one of those things like a/the in English that depend on enough experience to build up an instinct...

[elenothar]

I just accidentally saw the bit below about le with future and my brain threatened a meltdown. I think this may be one grammar point that I hope I'll one day do semi-instinctively because keeping all this straight? Uh-uh.

[nnozomi]

Same on all counts. (Maybe it's like the future perfect in English...? except not...?) I do think (hope) it's probably one of those things that eventually becomes an instinct with enough experience, knock wood.

[presumenothing]

Possibly to complicate matters, but all these are the same in my head – i.e. whatever's being 了d is a done deal at the point in time where the speaker is viewing events from (doesn't matter whether it's present/future or even hypothetical):

我们毕业了！

他去年就从大学毕业了，但还是找不到工作。

你下个月就会毕业了吧？有什么计划吗？

若我当时没从博士退学，现在就应该快要毕业了吧。

[grayswandir]

all these are the same in my head

Hah, I think that's good news, actually. At least, I was hoping they were all pretty much the same thing.

I think we sort of talked about the future usage in a comment discussion once before, when we were discussing aspect and how you can have 了 in (future) commands like 杀了他 or 忘了他. I still find 了 difficult because I can never tell when you need it -- I tend to assume most verbs imply that you complete them (e.g. 杀 by itself already implies to me that the killing is actually completed), and I feel like immersion might be the only way to get used to when it's necessary and when it's not. But at least if it's all one meaning, that's less confusing than trying to learn forty different usages of 了!

[nnozomi]

I wonder if it's possible to think of 杀了他 as "get him killed" or something, for a translation that incorporates the 了. overthinking as usual (also, knock wood, this one is NOT likely to be useful in everyday life, but still)

[trobadora]

I wonder if it has something to do with speech rhythm, or something in that vicinity? Maybe it's just me, but 杀他 would sound ... weird.

/possibly talking total nonsense here

[grayswandir]

Huh, you might have a point. I did think 杀他 sounded weird when I wrote it, but I wasn't sure why. But now that I think about it, I'm having trouble coming up with any single-character verbs that sound normal to me without something else besides the object added to the sentence. I wonder if cadence does have something to do with it...

[presumenothing]

你就原谅他吧 vs 你就杀了他吧

…it's not like one is more complete than the other but 原谅了 feels unnecessary, so yeah, the single character might actually matter?

[trobadora]

Language, so weird!

[grayswandir]

Interesting! I'm going to try to pay attention to this now...

[trobadora]

Hm, how about 看我? But yeah, it doesn't seem super common. (And of course there's also 看着我 ...)

[grayswandir]

Oh, can you just say 看我 as a whole sentence? I would have expected 看着我, but that might be because I don't listen to enough Mandarin... I feel like the Canto words for see/look would need either a suffix or more surrounding context to the sentence, like negation or something, or maybe reduplication of the verb (看看?), or at least a final particle. I don't know 看 as well, though, and anyway I could be wrong about the Cantonese usage, too...

[trobadora]

IIRC presumenothing said at one point that 看我 has a slightly different nuance from 看着我, but as far as I can tell they're both valid. (????)

[elenothar]

No, actually, I think that's helpful (? I may have reached the point where I can't even tell if something is helping or I'm just desperately grabbing onto something anything to make things more straightforward XD)

(Also, kudos for the visceral oh no response your middle sentences elicited, sob)

[nnozomi]

(? I may have reached the point where I can't even tell if something is helping or I'm just desperately grabbing onto something anything to make things more straightforward XD)
lol (I wonder if this is one of those grammar things which clicks much later on, oh THAT's how it works, as opposed to by immediate memorization at the moment)

[nnozomi]

this is helpful (or will be once I'm more clear-headed, 我会清楚了的时候？)--thank you! Future perfect (or in the case of the last one, future subjunctive) is not exactly it but does help me imagine future 了 better.

[trobadora]

It really helps me more to see it all as one thing rather than trying to pick it apart into a dozen different uses. So thanks muchly for this. :D