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HSK Beginner: Fill-in-the-Blanks Exercise #48

"That's no moon, it's the HSK!" The Falcon decelerated rapidly as Han threw its thrusters into reverse. But it was too late. The space-borne Chinese proficiency test had them caught them in its tractor beam. Soon enough, the entire ship would have their Chinese put to the test by the Emperor's crack team of mandarin-speaking invigilators. There would be no escape this time.

ignaciotripodi

said on

August 13, 2010

Good one!

Could you provide at least an overview on what the difference is between "考虑", "思想", "认为" and "觉得"? I would have used them indistinctly... :-/

Thanks!

Brendan

said on

August 14, 2010

@ignaciotripodi - Good question, and something we should go out of our way to explain in a future lesson.

考虑 means "to consider" or "to think over." It isn't just thinking of something -- it's thinking about something -- and thinking about it for a while. "Pondering" or "considering" might be good English verbs to peg this to.

思想 is actually a noun, and it equates more or less to "thought," as in "Mao Zedong thought" or something along those lines.

认为 implies a judgement -- it maps (kind of) to the English verb "to deem." 我认为是这样子 would be basically "I think it's like this."

觉得 implies more of a feeling or a sensation. I can think of sentences where 觉得 would be contrasted with 认为: "I feel it's like this -- but I think it's like this."