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Help in reading- Chinese Graded Reader 3- The story- 窗雪帘


yedafu

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Hello everybody,


Right now I'm in the middle of reading the story 窗雪帘by 迟子建 and there some sentences I don’t seem to fully understand there meaning and there grammar structure. Its would been great if you can answer me by the following criterias:


1) the sentence meaning in English


2) how the gramer stracture function in this sentence


 


Before I introduce the sentence I'l will give you guys a short summery of the story:


It’s about an old women from the countryside going on a long distance train for the first time in her life. As the train goes she does not know


she should exchange her original ticket for a sleeping berth ticket, and because of that she loses her sleeping berth. The other passengers seem to care a lot for her but still no one is offering her their own berth so she is left sitting on a small unconfutable chair for the rest of the


road.


 


That’s for the summery and now for the problems (I'm just on the first ten pages so I guess ther will be more question as I go further.


The first question;


 


1)有的小孩为了看外面的风景,就用手指刮着车窗上的霜花(REFFERING FOR THE ICE ON THE WINDOW),声音听上去很不舒服。


I understand the sentence meaning but don’t seem to understand how the 上去function in the sentence. Why not writing: 不舒服?


 


2) the old lady gets in to a fight with a men that buy her berth ticket: 胖男人不耐烦地说:“谁跟你这个老太太睡一个铺?你是哪张铺的,就快回哪儿去”可老太太认定了这胖男人要跟他睡一个铺,她问:“你这是要睡上半夜了?”


Well although I can understand the spirit of the dialog, i don’t seem to understand what the meaning of "睡一个铺“also the sentence这是要睡上半夜了?I don’t understand the meaning and the grammar structure.


 


Well that’s it for now! Many thanks for yours ansersJ   

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I'm a native speaker. Happy to help you here.

 

1) 不舒服 is a wrong phase. 听上去很不舒服 means "This sound sounds terrible" Though written in a active manner, but it's actually a passive voice. That's the keypoint here.

 

blabla 得 blabla is used for active sentence, roughly defining a property of the subject. Usage of this structure is somewhat difficult and ambiguous. Some native speaker also cannot tell it clearly and also make mistakes here. 

 

It's like a adverb structure in English. For example,

我们吃很开心。 We eat happily.

袋鼠跳很高。 Kangaroos (can) jump high.

 

For another kind of sentence in English like 

The song sounds good.

This dish tastes delicious.

They look like active voice, but actually they are passive voice. (Am I right? At least Chinese think in this way.) They are actually

The song is good to be sounded/heard.

This dish is delicious to be eaten.

 

Notice! In these cases, you cannot use blabla 得 blabla structure! You say

这首歌很好听。

这盘餐很好吃。

 

I hope I made a helpful explanation. It also hard for me to understand because this structure is really kind of ambiguous in Chinese. If you say in your way, I'm pretty sure Chinese can understand well you and ignore your mistake. Probably they don't know you are wrong!

 

2) 睡一个铺 is a simple way of saying 睡在同一个铺上, means "sleep on the same bed". It's a kind of oral Chinese. 

I don't know why we do simplification in this way because it sounds like "sleep a bed", which is totally a different meaning. I'd like to say it's a stupid simplification here. There is nothing you can do but memorize it. 

 

这是要 means "going to do". We do not have tense in Chinese. So we use context or some special words to imply it. 这是要 or is a typical phase to imply future tense. I really don't know how to analyse it character by character. They just work together! 

Examples:

我要睡了。 I will sleep.

我要好好学习! I am going to study hard!

 

这是 can be neglected without changing the meaning. It's used in oral Chinese.

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2) 睡一个铺 is a simple way of saying 睡在同一个铺上, means "sleep on the same bed". It's a kind of oral Chinese. 

I don't know why we do simplification in this way because it sounds like "sleep a bed", which is totally a different meaning. I'd like to say it's a stupid simplification here.

 

 

 

Ah it's not so stupid if you think like "sleep on one bed". Though you would be inserting the "on". 

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