Richard Thorpe eyed the customs officer with suspicion. Although his mission came down from the highest levels of government, he was certain that it would cause a scene regardless if homeland security found an intoxicated and possibly drugged cat in his backpack. As he reached for his passport, the former merchant banker decided to play his trump card.

Learning Chinese? Our lesson for today is a relatively short discussion of the strange behavior of measure words. We all know the basic rules for using measure words: put them in front of countable nouns and try not to mix them up too much. But as we learn today, that's not quite all there is. In fact, there are two situations in which Chinese speakers will commonly drop measure words, even if it's grammatically correct to include them. Listen to our podcast for the juicy details.
 said on
March 8, 2012
Very good lesson, thanks! Just a quick question:

Is there a reason '你的名字是秘密?' doesn't have a 吗 at the end?

Is it because the question is more inquisitive than just a simple yes-no question? ie. He's expressing disbelief and is expecting a more lengthy explanation rather than just 是/不是。 Am I right?

Thanks!
 said on
March 9, 2012
It's the intonation and the context that makes it a question in that case. The dark arts of Chinese is getting one's own voice to sound like that without coming out as impossibly strained.

EDIT: egg on my face I guess.
 said on
March 9, 2012
@mooreharry_2,

你的名字是秘密?is a more rhetorical question here. That's the reason why there is no 吗 at the end.

--Amber

amber@popupchinese.com
 said on
June 23, 2015
interesting grammar point - i thought he said "Your Name is Mimi?" and then the other person would answer "Whether or not my name is Mimi is also a secret" - it still makes kinda more sense to me, than the actual translation
 said on
July 3, 2015
@brambadger, yeah. I thought it meant that his name was literally "secret", not "a secret".