past negation

[etribe]

just a quick question over negation in the past tense. i understand you must do the following:

# 我没看見你。 (wǒ mèi kànjiàn nĭ) - Literal: I not see you - I didn't see you

# 我不看見你。 (wǒ bù kànjiàn nĭ) - Literal: I not see you - I don't see you

my question is whether 'mei' stays in 2nd tone, or switches to 4th tone like 'bu'

regards

etribe

[chrix]

No, 沒 as a negator is always pronounced "méi", but the same character can also be pronounced mò in the sense of "sink, submerge"

[Sarevok]

'mei' always stays in 2nd tone, it doesn't switch tone like 'bu'

Edited March 3, 2010 at 08:57 PM by Sarevok

[etribe]

thanks !!

[Gharial]

just a quick question over negation in the past tense. i understand you must do the following:

# 我没看見你。 (wǒ mèi kànjiàn nĭ) - Literal: I not see you - I didn't see you

# 我不看見你。 (wǒ bù kànjiàn nĭ) - Literal: I not see you - I don't see you

my question is whether 'mei' stays in 2nd tone, or switches to 4th tone like 'bu'

I'm not sure if you realize that the basis of your reasoning regarding bu (let alone mei) is wrong (that is, the wrong way around). Bu is fourth tone to start with and therefore switches to SECOND tone before other fourth tones.

Or you could say that it switches from fourth to second tone when there is a following fourth tone. (View it like a ramp being raised to help clear the top of a hill and avoid two downhill drops in a row!).

As others have said, mei doesn't change its tone and therefore stays a second tone.

By the way, I'd recommend something like the original version of the Colloquial Chinese course (by T'ung & Pollard, pub. Routledge 1982~, though nowadays only occasionally reprinted i.e. could be out of print; a limited preview was however available on Google Books the last time I looked), because it definitely marks called-for tone changes (excluding to series of third tones, which doesn't concern us here), which to my mind is more helpful than not. For example: Tianqi zhen hao, bu4 leng3, bu2 re4. (The book uses the usual standard tone graphs over the main vowels rather than numbers though).

Edited March 6, 2010 at 12:22 PM by Gharial

[Shi Tong]

I feel like in reality neither of these sentances are actually used.

我没看到你 (I cant see you)-- (you're supposed to be here, but I cant see you)

我不看你 (I no look you)-- (I dont want to look at you)

If you want to say you didn't see someone at some place you would probably say:

我没有看到你, the same as the above (I cant see you), but used in context, obviously.

So therefore, if you were looking for someone and you were speaking on a phone you would say "我没有看到你", then later, if you saw them you would say "我看到你了".

Later that person might be saying to you "how could you not see me", to which the answer would be "我没有看到你", used in context "I didn't see you".

Of course, you could complicate things further and say: "我刚才就是没有看到你了" to help with the context, as this would indicate that "I, just now, just didn't see you", though 我没有看到你 is also correct.