posted by Fire69 on October 15, 2010 | 5 comments
Hey there!
I have a little translation-question :-)
I found a Dutch site for learning Chinese.
They have a dialog about listening to music.
"Nǐ zài zuò shénme?" is translated to "What are you listening to?"
Shouldn't that be "What are you doing?" ?
Or is it more a general question that can also be used for asking about the music?
Thanks! :-)
Absolute Beginners on October 15, 2010 | reply
@Fire69 - Yes. The translation should be "what are you doing". 你在听什么 would be "what are you listening to"?
Thanks for clearing that up. :)
Another unrelated question:
"Wǒ jiā de kètīng hěn dà."
Why is "de" after "jiā" here??
jesschen1025 on October 19, 2010 | reply
De after Jia means house's. The whole sentence means the living room in my house is very big.
If you have De before Jia, e.g. Wo De Jia = my house.
Hope my explanation is clear.
@Fire69:
In most cases the "de" structure equates to our English sentence pattern,
The...that, the...in..., the...who, the...which, the...when
So the sentence, "Wǒ jiā de kètīng hěn dà", translates to, "the living room in my house is very big."
Putting it into the Chinese sentence structure, "My house's living room (is) very big."
"的" also has a possessive usage, EG: wǒ de lǎo pó, (my wife)wǒ de fáng zi (my house), wǒ de shū (my book), wǒ de chē (my car)
Thank you both :-)I had already figured it out by myself.The 'de' here belongs to 'jiā' and not 'wǒ'. That had me confused a little. :-)
starwars120 on July 22, 2011 | reply
Nǐ zài zuò shén me?" should be to "你在做什么？"or “你在干什么？”