An interesting sentence (from a dialog)

[DrWatson]

I'm reading my first novel in Chinese and thoroughly enjoying it. So much vocabulary! I also appreciate the dialog, but sometimes I'm puzzled with some of the dialog. For example,

我认出来：“哟，老方！你怎么也管我叫起老师了？

While I understand the general meaning, I have been puzzled by 也 and 管 in the above sentence.

Is 怎么也 the same thing as 怎么样？

What does 管 mean in this context? Is it like the 把 structure?

[anonymoose]

管A叫B means "call A B". You can think of 管 like 把, but as far as I know, it is only used in this way in this specific collocation.

怎么 means "how come" or "how", depending on context:

我怎么到火车站？ How do I get to the train station?

你怎么也去火车站？ How come you are also going to the train station?

As for the 也, I'll leave that for somebody else to comment on, but my guess is that it just means "also" here.

[aristotle1990]

The 也 does indeed mean "also," but you'll have to read more to find out why. (I recognize the sentence.)

[daofeishi]

What novel is it from?

[tooironic]

Like anonymoose said, 管…叫… means "to call". You can read more about these kind of structures in one of my blog entries. Compared to 把…叫…, 管…叫… is more colloquial and has a Northern Mandarin feel to it. Its formal synonyms are 把…称呼为… and 将…称呼为….

[aristotle1990]

盛世.

[skylee]

This pattern is not uncommon. I used it in my blog.

殯儀館的人管弟弟叫孝男，我們叫孝女。起初弟弟根本不知道原來孝男就是自己。

[DrWatson]

aristotle1980,

The 也 does indeed mean "also," but you'll have to read more to find out why. (I recognize the sentence.)

That you can recognize the novel from one line is quite impressive!

[DrWatson]

大家：

Thank you for the responses and examples, it was very helpful. I'll have to file this 官。。。叫 structure in the back of my head for later use someday.

tooironic,

Thanks for sharing you blog, that page of grammar is a great reference!