第一百四十三天

[nnozomi]

语法
要 + noun for "want something". (Why are all the 要 meanings on one page when 了 is so spread out? First quarter of the page today, anyway)
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Auxiliary_verb_%22yao%22_and_its_multiple_meanings

词汇
喝, to drink, a nice straightforward verb (pinyin in tags)
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-1-word-list/

Guardian:
你不知道，他们要的是我 you don't understand, it's me they want
沈老师，外面太阳大，喝口水吧 Professor Shen, it's so sunny out, have some water
你什么时候开始喝... since when do you drink?
(Interestingly, Shen Wei uses 喝 with 粥, congee, which I would have thought of as 吃. I guess it's soup in his mind? 药, medicine, seems to go with both 吃 (for pills) and 喝 (for medicinal tea etc.).)

Me:
我真要巧克力，但是会坚持。
你喝不喝热茶？

Comments

[cathyw]

various and assorted verbs have been confusing me this week (in a lot of cases it's 了's fault, why does this one need 到 in addition to 了? why does this one need the 了 right after when this nearly identical sentence has it at the end? aaaargh.) so it's good to remember that a nice straightforward one exists.

I wonder if the 喝/吃 distinction relates to eating with a spoon vs chopsticks?

[nnozomi]

了 is such a headache, I'm just trying to take it as it comes and figure it's one of those things you eventually get a feel for through sheer quantity of exposure...

I wonder if the 喝/吃 distinction relates to eating with a spoon vs chopsticks?
ooh, that's an interesting idea! You may be right. Let's see what we can find out.

[trobadora]

SHL: 你爹是千杯不倒的酒量，怎么能生一个不会喝酒的儿子？

As for 要, well, you know which songs immediately popped into my mind. *g*

[nnozomi]

前辈会喝千杯的酒。。。 (sorry, I couldn't resist the homonym)

you know which songs immediately popped into my mind. *g*
I DO ;) I almost quoted them up front! (English grammar complications are making me think twice about both of them, though. 我要你在我身旁, 我要我们在一起, is the object of 要 a noun phrase starting with the preposition or is it a separate clause altogether ("I want you at my side" vs "I want you to be at my side" etc.) and is that even a relevant distinction to bother making in the Chinese context?
(Sorry, just ignore me, I get like this)

[trobadora]

Hee, LOL at the homophone! :D

and is that even a relevant distinction to bother making in the Chinese context?

Ooh, good point, it might not be! If the distinction matters, I also have no clue, but I'd love to know! You're not alone with getting like this. *g*

[nnozomi]

homophone! right. how did I do that. (This kind of silly joke always makes it easier for me to remember vocabulary, like 我打算吃大蒜).

I'll see if I can ask a native speaker about the 我要你 problem, but it might be one of those things where to a native it just seems like "...what's the difference, anyway you understand the meaning." Oh well. To quote the relevant song, 哎哟哎哟哎哟 ;)

[elenothar]

(Interestingly, Shen Wei uses 喝 with 粥, congee, which I would have thought of as 吃. I guess it's soup in his mind? 药, medicine, seems to go with both 吃 (for pills) and 喝 (for medicinal tea etc.).)

... I'm having flashbacks to the tumblr soup discourse XD

[nnozomi]

... I'm having flashbacks to the tumblr soup discourse XD
okay, this one I don't know about and I think I'll spare myself :) (Oh, and I just remembered that it's the same in LTR, Er Jing tells Wu Xie 喝点粥.)

[elenothar]

I'm very impressed you just remembered that. Happy to take that as fact now, given that I've also seen people sort of slurp it in dramas.

[nnozomi]

the 喝点粥 line might happen to be in the middle of a sequence of scenes I have watched way too many times (LTR season 2-15...). At least it's good for my vocabulary?

and that's actually a good metric, along with the spoon vs chopsticks cathyw proposes above! If you can slurp it, it's 喝 rather than 吃?

(also laughing at the "escalating soup/sandwich/salad wildness" in your comment below)

[trobadora]

I've also been thinking about the 喝/吃 distinction. I feel like in German, the distinction is between lifting a vessel to your mouth and drinking, vs. taking something from a vessel (either with your fingers or an utensil) and eating. So you can either eat or drink soup, depending. Not sure if that's objectively correct, but calling it drinking when there's a spoon involved feels wrong to me. Either way, it's even more frustrating not to have any sense of where the line is in Chinese ... *grumpy*

[grayswandir]

I was at first thinking this was the distinction for English, too, but then thinking about it further... I feel like soup may be a unique case? I can't actually think of anything else that you can both eat and drink in English. Like, if you put coffee into a bowl with a spoon, I'd still say you were "drinking" it. I can't imagine anyone saying someone was "eating water" or "eating tea," even if they were using a soup spoon. Would it be the same in German?

[trobadora]

Hm. I wouldn't say "eat" if you tried to consume your coffee all with a spoon, but I wouldn't call it drinking either? I would never say "they ate/drank a spoonful of coffee"; I'd use some sort of circumlocution to avoid the verb. *g* And with water it would be so strange to do, I might say something like "they tried to eat their water with a spoon" just to get across the weirdness.

... That doesn't really help, does it?

[elenothar]

Ahhh, yes, I immediately recall which scene you're talking about XD The 15s are both good.

[trobadora]

... tumblr soup discourse? There's discourse about soup now?!

[elenothar]

Ok, in fairness it wasn't discourse discourse of the acrimonious kind, but for a while there was this thing going on where all foods had to be declared either a soup, a salad or a sandwich - with escalating wildness, naturally. I still occasionally see 'technically x is a sandwich' posts and such.

[trobadora]

Aw, that's 1,000% more charming than what I imagined when you said discourse! *g*

[elenothar]

I sometimes forget that discourse is such a weighted word now (oops). But yes, it was pretty charming.

[grayswandir]

So I got curious about this whole 喝粥 thing, because I know in Cantonese you definitely eat congee (although you do drink soup). Looking at Mandarin sentences in some of the dictionaries I use, I found five examples with 喝... but also two with 吃. And meanwhile, Google turns up about twice as many results for "吃*粥" vs. "喝*粥." :/

I didn't get too in-depth, but I did find a couple of forum pages with people asking about it (Baidu, HiNative), and it looks like most of the answers seem to say both usages are fine. Some people seem to be claiming that 喝 is only for when the consistency is thinner; someone else claims the different usages are regional; someone else says 喝 is technically correct and 吃 is due to foreign influence. The only consensus seems to be that it's okay to use either one!

[trobadora]

The only consensus seems to be that it's okay to use either one!

That's good to know!

[presumenothing]

because I know in Cantonese you definitely eat congee

Was waiting to see if you'd say this because I had the vague impression this was the case, and anyway I'm half-convinced this is also because 粥 itself is literally different per region?? I have a hard time imagining saying 喝 about HK-style congee – in my head it only applies to maybe seriously watery types like Teochew porridge, but since that's usually eaten with side dishes anyway…

…yes, this is to say I'm firmly in the 吃 camp, standard-correct or not, and 吃粥 / 喝汤 is what I learned for Hokkien too!

[grayswandir]

I'm half-convinced this is also because 粥 itself is literally different per region??

Ah, I hadn't even thought of that. Yeah, I can imagine that if in some regions it's more watery and soup-like, by analogy it would make sense to use 喝 there.

I'm firmly in the 吃 camp, standard-correct or not, and 吃粥 / 喝汤 is what I learned for Hokkien too!

That does make the foreign-influence theory seem less likely! I'd be surprised if Hokkien, Cantonese, and Mandarin all brought in 吃粥 from outside...

[nnozomi]

I asked a friend in Taiwan for her opinion, and just made everything more complicated: 喝粥，吃稀饭, she said. Even though most places say 粥 and 稀饭 are the same thing... (they even have the same emoji lol 🥣🥣). She said: "粥应该比较像很浓的米汤，所以喝的。稀饭比较像是煮得很软很软的饭，所以我们说吃稀饭," and added “不过粥和稀饭，用吃或食用喝的，都应该没关系," so I give up. If you chew it it's 吃 and if not it's 喝, apparently? *facepalm*

[grayswandir]

Oh no. XD

I'd never heard of 稀饭 before. Maybe whether or not you distinguish between 粥 and 稀饭 as different consistencies is also regional?

[nnozomi]

Maybe so? 稀饭 was new to me likewise, oh dear. All in all I think if I'm ever in the relevant context I will give up on the whole thing and just order 面！

[trobadora]

I will cling to that "都应该没关系" ...

[nnozomi]

I will cling to that "都应该没关系" ...
I KNOW. Frustrating in the "but what's the right answer?!" sense, but reassuring likewise...