有点 - Must be a negative sentiment?

[Apollys]

So I was going through this grammar page and came across:
 

Quote

Note that for the speaker, the adjective after “有点 (yǒudiǎn)” expresses an unpleasant or undesirable meaning, so you won't hear things like “有点高兴 (yǒudiǎn gāoxìng),” “有点舒服 (yǒudiǎn shūfu),” “有点好玩儿 (yǒudiǎn hǎowánr),” etc., because "happy," "comfortable," and "fun" are all positive adjectives.

Upon reading that, I became a little confused, recalling this sentence from my Anki deck:
他有点像他的父亲。

The translation of the sentence as given didn't suggestion anything negative about the desired meaning of this sentence.  So I'm wondering, is this is a bad sentence?  Should I evict it from my deck next time I come across it?  Or should I change the English translation to carry a negative sentiment, like "he looks a little too much like his father"?

[Flickserve]

looking like a father is not an emotional state 

[歐博思]

有點___ could be sarcastic, i.e...

 

*comes home to find chocolate cake eaten*

 

"Why did you eat my chocolate cake, 我有點高興”

 

 

[Apollys]

Okay...

But it's not sarcastic in this case.  And what you say is fine @Flickserve, but that doesn't help me at all.  The grammar rule says:

Quote

the adjective after “有点 (yǒudiǎn)” expresses an unpleasant or undesirable meaning

which is clearly not the case in the sentence I have given.  We have a direct contradiction.  So which one is incorrect?

[anonymoose]

Not everything you find on the internet is gospel. I think the webpage you quoted overstates it with 'the adjective after '有点 (yǒudiǎn)' expresses an unpleasant or undesirable meaning".

 

有点 simply means "a little bit", and just like it would be odd to say “a little bit comfortable” or "a little bit happy", it is likewise odd to say 有点舒服 or 有点高兴. I don't think 有点 is necessarily restricted to being followed by adjectives with a negative meaning, and 有点像 is a good example of this.

 

[Flickserve]

What anonymoose said. Rather than think 有点 as 'a little too', go back to its basic meaning.

 

The logic of the sentence will also help. 'He looks a little too much like his father '. Doesn't make much sense.

 

So, answering the title of the thread, not necessarily.

[realmayo]

 

On 16/01/2017 at 10:11 PM, Apollys said:

the adjective after “有点 (yǒudiǎn)” expresses an unpleasant or undesirable meaning

 

像 isn't an adjective. Doesn't that explain it?

[Apollys]

11 hours ago, Flickserve said:

'He looks a little too much like his father '. Doesn't make much sense.

 

That could definitely make sense.  What if "his father" were Osama Bin Laden?

[Flickserve]

1 hour ago, Apollys said:

 

That could definitely make sense.  What if "his father" were Osama Bin Laden?

Sure.

 

I won't stop you from assuming everybody's father is Bin Laden or Donald Trump. But don't come back and ask why people give you funny looks for making those assumptions.

[realmayo]

But anyway 像 is a verb not an adjective.

 

[dwq]

"有点高兴" is not unused, indeed googling the phrase (with quotes) gives 195000 results.

 

[realmayo]

However scanning down the list I think it's instructive how many examples are 又有点高兴, i.e. I was a bit sad, but also a bit happy.

Or 我却有点高兴、 还是有点高兴、竟然有点高兴 etc...

... so the negative sense is still highlighted, but in these cases it's its absence that is highlighted ('although I shouldn't be happy, actually I was a bit')

 

[陳德聰]

16 hours ago, realmayo said:

像 isn't an adjective. Doesn't that explain it?

 

I think this essentially does explain it. If you want to have a "rule" for everything then you will be sorely disappointed.

 

The site you quoted seems like a good guideline. In general, I would not say 我有點高興, but what do you say to 我有點餓 and 我有點飽? You could try to say that being hungry is a "negative" (in the sense of bad negative) thing and then that when saying 有點飽 it expresses a similar negative feeling in that you can't eat more even if you want to, but honestly that feels like unnecessary stretching.

 

I don't doubt that there is a semantic restriction, but I think it's more like a restriction against clearly positive (both positive as in "good" and positive as in "additive") adjectives vs a restriction to only negative adjectives.

 

However the point about Verb vs Adjective also makes it clear that there is no restriction on verbs: 我有點想吃冰淇淋，我有點感興趣 etc.

[L-F-J]

I think the highlighted quote from the grammar page is wrong about never seeing positive adjectives after 有点.

 

有点舒服 and 有点好玩儿 also have tens of thousands of Google results, and of course a bunch more if you search the Chinese web via Baidu.

 

And I could certainly conceive of going to IKEA with the wife to test out the sofas and she asks me if I think this one is comfy, and I go 嗯，有点舒服... Yeah, it's kinda comfy.

 

On 1/18/2017 at 8:38 AM, anonymoose said:

有点 simply means "a little bit", and just like it would be odd to say “a little bit comfortable” or "a little bit happy", it is likewise odd to say 有点舒服 or 有点高兴. I don't think 有点 is necessarily restricted to being followed by adjectives with a negative meaning, and 有点像 is a good example of this.

 

 

"A little bit comfortable" and "a little bit happy" sound odd because they're Chinglish.

 

有点舒服 and 有点高兴 are perfectly fine in Chinese, and "kind of comfortable" and "kind of happy" are perfectly fine English translations for them.

 

Learning Chinese is kind of fun, 有点好玩儿. Doesn't it make you kind of happy too? 

[realmayo]

2 hours ago, L-F-J said:

she asks me if I think this one is comfy, and I go 嗯，有点舒服

I wonder to what extent the naturalness of that response is because it is a response, that 舒服 has already been introduced. If the question was simply 'what do you think of the sofa' and the response is simply '有点舒服', does it sound any different? I can't help feeling it wants a bit more context to sound right. Or indeed a medical situation?

 

And again, a quick scan of the g-hits for " 有点高兴" shows lots following the pattern 有点xx，有点高兴  e.g. 有点心酸，有点高兴.

 

To be honest, I'm not sure this is all simply a function of Chinese grammar, because it's basically the same as in English isn't it? Do you like my trousers? Hmm they're a bit pink aren't they? I can't think of many examples in English which, without particular context, don't carry a bit of a negative meaning (excluding comparative adjectives).

[889]

I don't think unpleasant or undesirable is a requirement for this usage: "他是真有點錢了."

[jgraham11]

I suppose everything in context but i've always used it as "little bit" and I can't really think of using it in a negative way so much

[L-F-J]

8 hours ago, realmayo said:

I wonder to what extent the naturalness of that response is because it is a response, that 舒服 has already been introduced. If the question was simply 'what do you think of the sofa' and the response is simply '有点舒服', does it sound any different? I can't help feeling it wants a bit more context to sound right. Or indeed a medical situation?

 

I really don't think it would sound unnatural at all. If that were the question, I could say;

 

有点舒服，但是颜色不太喜欢. It's kinda comfy, but I don't really like the color.

 

In fact, googling “有点舒服，但是” comes up with 26,000 results.

 

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And again, a quick scan of the g-hits for " 有点高兴" shows lots following the pattern 有点xx，有点高兴  e.g. 有点心酸，有点高兴.

 

So, it shows it can be used with the positive or negative.

 

Try “我今天有点高兴” or just “今天有点高兴”. It's very common. 23,500 results.

 

Even narrowing the search to “今天有点高兴，因为” still comes up with quite a few.

 

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To be honest, I'm not sure this is all simply a function of Chinese grammar, because it's basically the same as in English isn't it? Do you like my trousers? Hmm they're a bit pink aren't they? I can't think of many examples in English which, without particular context, don't carry a bit of a negative meaning (excluding comparative adjectives).

 

I just tried to give a couple in my last post. I think it's due to the way you're translating it. 有点 can mean "kind of".

 

"I'm kind of happy for you. You worked hard. You deserve it."

“有点替你高兴” 5,340 Google results.

 

"This is kind of fun!"

“这有点好玩” 15,800 Google results.

 

Pretty sure this shows that the quote on the grammar page that "you won't hear things like..." is just wrong. I do hear things like that, quite often.

[dwq]

I wonder if this has something to do with "be generous with your praise, but cautious with criticism"?

We try to emphasize our positive feelings so that 我很高興 is more common than 我高興 .

The bias is so great that when we hear 我有點高興 we try to find out WHY the speaker isn't MORE happy.

But when a friend does something to offend, some people would moderate their comment with 我有點氣他幹了那些事 and not say 我(很)生氣他幹了那些事 .

 

But I believe 有點高興 can indeed be used in a neutral manner only expressing the extent of happiness.

 

我彩票中了四獎，有點高興。

Could be a neutral judgement of how happy I am.  It does not have to mean I regret not winning the third prize or above.

 

那嬰孩看來有點高興。

(Also a neutral judgement) Look like a slight smile to me, he/she is not laughing out loud.

 

And I agree that "you won't hear things like..." is just wrong.

 

[Daniel Tsui44]

有点 - Must be a negative sentiment?

No.

 

It means a little. When Chinese people try to express their good feeling or positive thing, we tend to enlarge it, so when people feel happy, they'll say "我很高兴”(I'm very happy) rather than “我有点高兴”(I'm a little happy), oppositely, when talking about unpleasant thing or bad feel, we tend to shrink it. 

 

Why do we do that, I think it's because that when you fell positive, you want pass more positive energy to other people, and when you feel say negative, you want to pass less negative energy to other people. 

 

他有点像他的父亲。It's a correct and good sentense for sure.