I got trouble to know when I must use...

[立思。 (Chris).]

Nimen hao:

I always got trouble to know when to use 之。Who will explain it to me?

Thank you,

Chris.

[jiangping]

Perhaps a native speaker (...or probably several non-native speakers on here) can give you a better answer, but this is how I think about 之.

Firstly, it comes from Classical Chinese, where it has a bunch of meanings. As far as I know, only two of those meanings have survived, and they are as follows.

(1) the same as 的 in modern. The main difference is firstly that it is very formal, and secondly that it must have a monosyllabic noun after it. I like to think of it as a sort of "heavy 的", coupling with the last syllable to give a nice disyllabic structure. Off the top of my head I can think of: 其中之一 (one among them), 德國之聲 ("The Sound of Germany", the name of a radio show), and 一念之差 ("momentary slip", a set phrase). It seems to crop up most often in 成語 (set phrases) and titles.

(2) a pronoun meaning "it, them, him, her" etc. One thing to watch out for is that 之 can only appear as object, never as subject - for that you can use 其. Other than that I can't think of any special restrictions, except high level of formality.

I hope this helps a bit.

[Glenn]

Would that mean that 取而代之 would be "take and replace it" literally? That one's always been a bit ambiguous for me, and I just learned the overall meaning.

[skylee]

取而代之 = 取代之 = replace him/her/it ; take his/her/its place

[Glenn]

So it falls quite nicely under the #2 meaning jiangping gave. Thanks, skylee!