"Bob and I" vs "I and Bob"

[xifbk]

How would you translate this? ie "Bob and I watch tv"?

Bob跟我看电视

or

我跟Bob看电视

Does it matter which way it goes, if so why?

[anonymoose]

Technically, I think both are OK, but from my experience, it sounds as though usually people put 我 first. (I'm not a native speaker though.)

Also, it sounds to me as though the sentence is missing something. Again, I emphasise that I'm not a native speaker, so you might like to wait until a native speaker can confirm or otherwise. But I think it would be more natural to say 我跟Bob一起看电视 or 我跟Bob都看电视, depending specifically on what it is you are trying to express.

Edited January 25, 2010 at 02:51 PM by anonymoose

[Erbse]

In German it is impolite to put myself before the others in a sentence, so "I and Bob" would be grammatically correct, but not socially acceptable. I always thought this is true for most languages, even in English.

[skylee]

Technically, I think both are OK,

I agree.

it sounds to me as though the sentence is missing something. Again, I emphasise that I'm not a native speaker, so you might like to wait until a native speaker can confirm or otherwise. But I think it would be more natural to say 我跟Bob一起看电视

Yes it does sound better if the OP wants to say Bob and I watch TV together.

[chrix]

Erbse, just don't overgeneralise from one language to the other too quickly. While this might be a tendency found in many, not all languages work that way, we'll have to look at each and every language separately...

[gerri]

chrix, what's your impression/knowledge as to the issue in Chinese? It seems to me that it's rather normal/natural to place yourself first in this language (but don't you dare sound proud )

[chrix]

My impression is that first person tends to come first, and a couple of google searches seem to support this.

My hunch as to why this is so would not be for cultural reasons but for grammatical ones: the various words for "and" in Chinese seem all to have been derived from co-verbs, and in such constructions naturally the subject goes first.

It's only a hunch though, this could be wrong...

[M-Segments]

I look forward to some input from native Mandarin speakers, but in the meantime I decided to cheat on Google.

"跟我": 35 million hits

"我跟": 20 million hits

This seems to indicate that 跟我 is the more popular format, but we don't know what comes before 跟 or after 我, so I narrowed it down a little ...

"你跟我": 30 million hits

"我跟你": 45 million hits

Now I'm confused! Not only did the order swap, but there are more hits for 我跟你 than there are for just 跟你. How is this possible?

"他跟我": 16 million hits

"我跟他": 2 million hits

In this case, the "跟我" has a clear lead.

In conclusion, not being a native speaker, I don't know the answer. However, using a "common usage" on the Net approach, my guess is "跟我" looks more common, although the alternative is common enough to not worry me about using it either.

Greg

[Daan]

Now I'm confused! Not only did the order swap, but there are more hits for 我跟你 than there are for just 跟你. How is this possible?

See this Language Log post, where Google's director of search quality is quoted as saying:

The bottom line, said Mr. Norvig, is that getting an accurate estimate isn't that important for most of Google's users, so the company hasn't invested much time and computing power. "It's only reporters and computational linguists who care if it's really precise," he said.

[chrix]

Be careful when using Google. It's not an annotated corpus. If you're doing stuff like that you have to compare entire phrases, i.e. "我跟X“ vs. "X跟我”, not just “跟我” where you can't control for what's in front...

Also 跟 is a co-verb as well, so many of your 16 million examples will be co-verbs where the order isn't determined by personal preference but by the grammar. Interestingly if you add "都" you can get around this problem, and for "他跟我都" there's only one hit, whereas "我跟他都" gets 3 million!

(Also look at other constructions such as 和, 与, 同...)

[Erbse]

and for "他跟我都" there's only one hit

"他跟我都" gives 7.7 million hits

depends on geolocation I guess.

"我跟他都" gets 3.3 million

[M-Segments]

I agree that you can't rely on simple static searches, hence my several attempts to find something useful.

I found it interesting to see what phrases you used to narrow down the search - I'm sure there is a science in there somewhere!

I most commonly use search engines for my Mandarin learning when testing which word/phrase is more common, if for example an electronic dictionary gives me several options.

Also, you can sometimes get a sense of which phrase is more formal and which is more colloquial, based on the actual sites which appear in the results.

(And, as they say in the classics, "generalising is always wrong" :-)

[chrix]

oops, Erbse, my google was broken I guess now it's showing 7 million for me too

Well, anyhow, this isn't going anywhere, we would need a good corpus of spoken Chinese, and even the best one I'm aware of (CALLHOME) is not all that big...

As they say in linguistics "generalising is never wrong if you have good data"

[LongwenChinese]

I am a native speaker but I am not necessarily right.

Whether it is "Bob and I" or "Me and Bob" depends on the context.

When the question asks "Ni3 gen1 shui2 kan4 dian4 shi4?" (Literally translated to: you and who watch TV?)

Then you would say "Wo3 gen1 Bob kan4 dian4 shi4."

Vice versa.

[Hofmann]

My impression is that whatever is first is usually the subject and the topic.

我跟Bob看電視。 The subject is 我, and 我 is 跟-ing Bob to 看電視.

Bob跟我看電視。 The subject is Bob, and Bob is 跟-ing 我 to 看電視.

[chrix]

Yes, Hofmann, that would follow from the "grammaticalised coverb" hypothesis. Unfortunately not enough data to work out all the details, so I'll bow out of this thread for now

[xifbk]

I could have made it a bit clearer, yes I am trying to work out if there is a rule at all, or if there is just a more natural way of saying it.

In my very limited experience it seems 我跟你。。。 is much more common.

My Taiwanese wife who was born in Australia (so is not a very good guide) thinks the order doesn't matter at all, but that doesn't tell me if one way is more natural than the other way.

[renzhe]

You should be careful when looking for things like "跟你“ because you'll find things like "我跟你说话", where one is the subject performing the action and one is the indirect object. This is very different from "我和你一起去散步”, where the two actors together form the subject.

If you're talking about just "you and me" as a together thing, I also have the feeling that 我 comes first more often. The order generally stresses one or the other. It's not impolite to put yourself first.

[trien27]

My impression is that whatever is first is usually the subject and the topic.

我跟Bob看電視。 The subject is 我, and 我 is 跟-ing Bob to 看電視.

Bob跟我看電視。 The subject is Bob, and Bob is 跟-ing 我 to 看電視.

Hofmann, you just hit the nail on the head.

[yzy19880801]

hi guys,

for native chinese speaker, "I" always comes first before others as subject. It has nothing to do with being polite, it's just it.

However, if you wanna emphasize that person(s) beside you, you can put them first. such as, 我妈和我看电视的时候， 她说。。。。。。

i am pure pure pure chinese.