Questions About Sentence Structuring...

[master66241]

Hello, I'm a new member of this forum.  I'm not sure where to post my questions, but I guess this sub board fits what I am seeking.

 

While reading/studying from Beginning Chinese 2nd Revised Edition by John DeFrancis, I came across this:

(PS I am not too good with Chinese. Plus, I'm only just beginning, so some vocab words may be too hard for me or I just haven't learned it yet)

 

Wǒ měitiān jiào liǎng gè zhōngtóu de shū (我每天叫两个钟头的书). (In the book, the English translation is: I teach two hours everyday)

 

I've come across similar lines, but now was the time for me to ask questions.

 

1.  Is it necessary to have "de" and "shū"? If we were to put the sentence as "Wǒ měitiān jiào liǎng gè zhōngtóu", wouldn't it still mean the same thing? 

2. The word "shu" was taught to me as books. However, in these lines, they use it differently. Can someone explain to me when you can use these words and perhaps even it's other alternate definitions.

 

For my next set of questions, I don't believe it should be in this section, but since it's the same thread, I guess I could ask it here too.

When saying "Chinese characters",  is it "Zhōngguó zì (中国字)" or "Zhōngwén zì (中文字)"? I was taught the latter, but I was wondering if the first choice could work too. Is there any difference between the 2?

 

Please help me...Thanks in advance!

[edelweis]

jiao = 教 (teach)?
probably a typo if written 叫 in your book.

[roddy]

1. It would mean the same thing and you can imagine someone saying it. But you'd be relying on context more and the sentence as given is perfectly fine. I also wonder what is being taught at this point? You might end up removing the very grammar point. 

2. It's a compound form (what are they called again?). Similarly the 饭 in 吃饭 doesn't necessarily mean rice. Learn them as they come up.

 

Welcome to the site!

[Mati1]

I also have the DeFrancis books. They teach me some expressions I don't usually here or read at other places. No doubt, some words and expressions are out of fashion now and / or used rarerly; but I think it's very interesting and easy enough. These might be less useful if you don't plan to read more "old" literature in the future.

 

I prefer to use the word 汉字 Hanzi. Not sure what to use best when and where.

This reminds me of 中文 zhongwen, 汉语 hanyu, 中国话 zhongguohua, 普通话 putonghua, ...

[889]

I like DeFrancis, but it's important to keep in mind that it teaches you a rather formal, structured Chinese. This is a good grounding for developing reading skills, and it's not hard as your studies progress to move your spoken Chinese from DeFrancis' formal patterns to more colloquial usages. So study DeFrancis, but recognize you're not learning particularly colloquial Chinese. That you'll pick up later.

 

Keep in mind, too, that colloquial Chinese likes a certain rhythm and without that rhythm your speech won't sound natural. Point is, to get that rhythm you sometimes have to add a word or two here or there to balance out the rhythm, even though it may not be strictly necessary in terms of meaning. So you shouldn't be asking yourself whether certain words are absolutely necessary in terms of meaning. You should be looking at the sentence as a whole and asking whether those words there make it sound more natural.

 

As to what to call those squarish things, I use 汉字 hanzi （not 汉子!)  almost exclusively.

[Shelley]

I find it very useful to not turn the chinese sentence into a "proper" English sentence. Unless you are learning to be a translator there is no real need to turn it in to an English sentence, I find it a good way to "think" in chinese

 

If you read the sentence as it is written in chinese, 我每天教两个钟头的书   I everyday teach two (measure word) hours (of) books. So it might depend on the context as to the need for the "books" What lesson was this sentence from?

 

I started to do this and it made it easier to understand the grammar and the meaning.

 

There was a discussion here started by me when I decided to use this method https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/50055-preserving-word-order/?tab=comments#comment-383691

 

 

[Publius]

A large number of compound verbs in Modern Standard Mandarin take the form of "verb + default object":

吃饭 eat meal

睡觉 sleep a sleep

走路 walk road

摔跤 fall a fall

做梦 make dream

洗澡 bathe a bath
唱歌 sing song

跳舞 dance a dance

数数 count numbers

教书 teach book

The nouns in these cases are better viewed as abstract placeholders. Basically, an extra syllable is tacked onto a monosyllabic verb to make it disyllabic, which is the preferred rhythmic structure of the modern language.

教英语 = to teach English, 教化学 = to teach chemistry. But 'teaching' in general, without specifying the subject, is 教书 (teach book) or 教课 (teach lesson) where 书 or 课 has little concrete meaning.

教书 is one word, but its two elements are separable when a modifier is present, in this case, the amount or duration: 教两个钟头的书.

 

我每天教两个钟头 is okay if "教 what" is deducible from the context. For example:

甲：我在网上教外国人学汉语。

乙：你每天教多长时间？

甲：我每天教两个钟头。

 

In the original sentence 我每天教两个钟头的书, the reason why 两个钟头 is modifying 书 is because although "I teach two hours everyday" is perfectly fine in English, in Chinese it is not.

In Chinese, all modifiers must precede the modified, and "verb + object + another modifier" is ungrammatical (the underlying structure of 教书 is "verb + object").

 

There is another way to rephrase the sentence:

我每天教书教两个钟头。

The underlined part is being topicalized, and 两个钟头 can follow the verb 教 as a complement (both V+O and V+C are allowed, but generally not V+O+C).

[Shelley]

@Publius at what level would you say this is taught? I don't remember this grammar point being taught in the same way you have just laid it out above. The only thing similar I can remember being taught was 吃了饭 to show completion.

 

 

[Mati1]

(Typo fixed, thanks.)

 

20 minutes ago, Publius said:

我每天教书教两个钟头。

My grammar is very lacking. If I remember correctly this is the preferred form when there is too much information in the sentence. So is this correct?

我每天教很长的名字的学科的书教两个钟头。

[Publius]

@ShelleyI doubt it's being taught at all. It's from my own contemplation while trying to answer questions such as this and this.

 

@Mati1 Sorry, I don't know. Don't ask native speakers about grammar. They are the worst teachers lol.

[Mati1]

[Angelina]

1 hour ago, Publius said:

There is another way to rephrase the sentence:

我每天教书教两个钟头。

The underlined part is being topicalized, and 两个钟头 can follow the verb 教 as a complement (both V+O and V+C are allowed, but generally not V+O+C).

 

 

When it comes to the structure of Chinese, it is important to mention that Chinese is a topic-prominent language. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic-prominent_language

[Lu]

6 hours ago, master66241 said:

When saying "Chinese characters",  is it "Zhōngguó zì (中国字)" or "Zhōngwén zì (中文字)"? I was taught the latter, but I was wondering if the first choice could work too. Is there any difference between the 2?

中国字 the characters of the country of China

中文字 the characters of the Chinese language

中国字 sounds a bit weird to me, almost politicised. But I suppose it could be used. 中文字 is a bit more natural. But generally, the most normal word for characters is 汉字.

[Mati1]

Lu, how about

中国字 The characters used within China.

中文字 The characters used in written Chinese.

汉字 The characters used in written standard Chinese.

Would this be more exact?

 

Is 中国字 ever used? Btw. my dictionary says "Chinese characters; the Chinese written language"

[master66241]

Alright, thanks everyone for the help. Learned a lot from it 

 

But regarding characters...I'm ashamed to say that I used Google Translate. I saw a lot of people on these forums were using characters, and thought it's best to do so too. I guess I shouldn't have.

 

But once again, thanks everyone.

[roddy]

You're welcome to use characters, but if you're not learning them I don't think anyone will object if you post pinyin (as long as you include tone marks, which you did). 

 

Keep the questions coming!

[Lu]

18 hours ago, Mati1 said:

中国字 The characters used within China.

中文字 The characters used in written Chinese.

汉字 The characters used in written standard Chinese.

Would this be more exact?

You can use Chinese characters anywhere you like: within China, outside China, on the moon... But the word 中国字 still sounds weird and a bit political. I don't think I've ever seen it, but it might be used, who knows.

中文 is written Chinese, although sometimes it's used for the entire Chinese language, so 我会说中文 is not wrong.

Standard Chinese = Mandarin, which in Chinese is 普通话 (or 国语). Characters can be used to write any type of Chinese, Mandarin or otherwise. In addition, they are used in Japanese and can be used to write Korean. 汉 refers to ethnic Chinese, Han Chinese. So literally, 汉字 means 'the characters of the ethnic Chinese'. The word 汉字 is also used in Japan and Korea to refer to the Chinese characters used there.

Best just call them 汉字, since that is the most common term. But you can use 中文字 if you like that.

[Mati1]

18 minutes ago, Lu said:

Characters can be used to write any type of Chinese, Mandarin or otherwise.

In the past I've learnt from a Chinese music video and the attached discussion that there are / were 1+ other Chinese minority scripts, which obviously aren't really used anymore. I find that very interesting but haven't delved into the topic yet.

I would not be surprised if a different Chinese (formerly) spoken language with a different script does not have a 1 to 1 character substitution.

[Lu]

When you say 'Chinese minority', do you mean the various minority people who live in China? Some of them do have their own script (the Naxi, Tibetans, Uigurs...) but their languages are not Chinese. The one script I can think of that was used to write Chinese but was not 汉字 was Nüshu 女书, the women's script. And of course there are transcription systems (Hanyu Pinyin, Zhuyin fuhao). But apart from that, I don't think Chinese has ever been written in something that was not 汉字.

[realmayo]

 

21 hours ago, Publius said:

A large number of compound verbs in Modern Standard Mandarin take the form of "verb + default object":

The ABC Dictionary, also by deFrancis, and which I relied on for ages because it's what's used by Wenlin, marks all of these as v.o. (verb+object). I remember it being quite useful to be reminded of that categorisation all the time. Similarly for so-called adjectives being split into s.v. versus attr. (stative verb versus attributives). And indeed r.v. for resultative verbs, to ram home the nature of those forms.