Question about use of "一个“

[Kongkaiwen]

Hello,

This is my first post here so 大家好。My question is about the use of 一个 in the sentence which I'd like to write.

My sentence is

她是一个很好朋友

I want to say "She is a very good friend." My question is, can 一个... be used to mean "a ...."?

I am only in my second year of (high school) Chinese so perhaps I am missing some larger grammatical point.

Thanks in advance!

[Guoke]

她是一个很好朋友

-----》 她是一个很好的朋友。

'的' is necessary in this sentence.

But, in the sentence '她是一个好朋友。', '的' is redundant.

[Kongkaiwen]

-----》 她是一个很好的朋友。

'的' is necessary in this sentence.

But, in the sentence '她是一个好朋友。', '的' is redundant.

So let me make sure I get what you're saying.

"她是一个好朋友" means "She is a good friend" and because 好朋友 in itself is a noun meaning goodfriend/best friend, while the sentence "她是很好的朋友" means "She is a very good friend" (meaning she is friendly, not that she is one of my good friends), and requires a 的 because 好 is a adj. modifying the noun 朋友?

In short, to say "She is a very good friend (friendly)" should I include 一个 or leave it out?

After rereading the thread on 的 I believe I understand what you mean by it being necessary, but how does including or leaving out 一个 change the meaning of the sentence?

[Hanlink]

Using 一个 in this sentence is optional. However, it does sound better and more natural with at least a 个, as in 她是个很好的朋友. If you put the full 一个 in, it might sound rather pedantic (but it really depends how you say it). Leaving 一个 out altogether, the sentence sounds a little bare, and depending on what you mean, you might want to add a 就是 eg 她就是很好的朋友 'just' or 'only', eg 而已 at the end. When you start to learn Chinese, it helps to see the one-to-one translation of 'a', but the reality is that often such is optional.

[stonelee]

The usage of 很好

的 is necessary When there is a noun, For example: 很好的人，很好的书，很好的电影