It's been a while since we've brought you a straight fill-in-the-blanks exercise at the Intermediate level. So today we remedy that with these fifteen HSK questions designed to torment the linguist in us all. Some of these are easy, but others are deceptively tricky. All fifteen questions test on points of grammar, pronunciation and word choice needed to master the HSK.
orbital
said on December 2, 2008
13/15. My gut feeling helped considerably with some of them, but I still fumbled questions 8 and 10. What exactly is the difference between 千万 and 万万 here?
trevelyan
said on December 2, 2008
My battle-hardened Contemporary Chinese Dictionary helpfully informs us that 千万 is used when admonishing others, while 万万 is a more general adverb meaning "absolutely" which tends to come before negative phrases. So the clue for that question would have been noticing that the subject was 我. Will check with Echo.
garethamew
said on December 2, 2008
11/15. Reasonable, but plenty of room for improvement there.
Echo
said on December 3, 2008
They both mean absolutely, but 千万 is usually used in future tense, like advices or warning. Such as 没有十足的把握，你千万别去冒险！You can replace it with 一定. 万万 is used in the situation that things have already happened. Like 我以前万万想不到，你会是这种人。It is like 绝对。
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
guanyu.jl
said on December 12, 2008
classic mistake of 正要 and 就要 mix-up. 14/15.
Echo
said on December 12, 2008
@guanyu.jl,
Almost the same meanings. Although 正要 is the present continuous tense and 就要 is emphasis. So we can have 马上就要...了，but not 正要.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
