nǐmen why is it there

[Sinisa]

Hello,

I have following sentence (from the Chinese handbook):

 

Nǐ rènshi nǐmen Zhōngwén lǎoshī de tàitai ma?

你 认识 你们 中文 老师 的 太太 吗

 

According to Google Translate that means : Do you know the wife of your Chinese teacher?

 

Or, literally: You know (you plural) Chinese language teacher's wife?

 

My question is: why is word nǐmen there, what does it signify/mean?

[889]

It means your here. Especially in speech, the 的 sometimes gets elided. It'd be particularly awkward in this sentence.

 

(Also, don't get in the habit of breaking characters into words in text. Everything runs together in Chinese.)

[Sinisa]

Instead nǐmen, shouldn't be there Nǐ de 你的?

How do you mean by breakin characters? I'm only a beginner, learning by using Pinyin instead Chinese characters...

 

[889]

Not necessarily: Do you (singular) know your (plural) teacher's wife. That is, your in this case refers to the students' teacher's wife, not the student's teacher's wife.

 

Here's what your text should look like, without breaks: 你认识你们中文老师的太太吗。Or in plain English, don't put spaces between words! (You do this when writing pinyin, but not when writing characters.)

[Sinisa]

No mention of word student in the original sentence.

 

If nǐmen (plural) is used, the English translation must be: Do you know the wives of your Chinese teacher - it is probably not logical translation regarding context (which presumes that one teacher can have/has multiple wives), but from the grammatical prospect it should be the correct one.

 

[roddy]

No. 

 

你[you singular]认识[know][你们[you plural]中文老师的[chinese teacher's]太太[wife]吗[?]

 

Do you [the person I'm speaking to] know your [class's] Chinese teacher's wife.

[Lu]

39 minutes ago, Sinisa said:

If nǐmen (plural) is used, the English translation must be: Do you know the wives of your Chinese teacher

No, that is incorrect.

你 you (1 person)

你们 you (2 or more persons)

It's unfortunate that English uses the same word for both singular and plural you, as it makes this harder to explain.

 

你们的老师的太太 means that the person asking the question is enquiring about the wife (singular) of the teacher (singular) of you (plural). One wife, one teacher, several students. The students are not literally in the text, but the 你们 in this case must be the students of the teacher.

[Publius]

46 minutes ago, Sinisa said:

If nǐmen (plural) is used, the English translation must be: Do you know the wives of your Chinese teacher - it is probably not logical translation regarding context (which presumes that one teacher can have/has multiple wives), but from the grammatical prospect it should be the correct one.

No.

你们=你们的

The possessive 的 is often dropped when describing a close relationship. See https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_close_possession_without_"de"

So the sentence really is 你(you)认识(know)你们(y'all)的('s)中文老师(Chinese teacher)的('s)太太(wife)吗(?), but that sentence is awkward on multiple levels: first, teacher-student relationship is considered close; second, there are too many repetitive 的s. To keep the sentence flow smoothly, usually only the last one is retained.

 

Your analysis is simply wrong. Word order is crucial in Chinese. There is no way the plural marker 们 can be construed to modify the head word 太太 several words away. If you want to say wives, it's 太太们.

 

And remember this: In Chinese, syntax is often entwined with semantics and discourse and, believe it or not, prosody.

[Sinisa]

In the English translation: Do you know the wife of your Chinese teacher?, your is not a plural form of you (personal pronoun), it is a possesive pronoun (more precisely: determiner).

Corresponding possesive pronoun to English your is nǐmende.

 

I am aware that English does not differ between you/singular and you/plural - in other languages, there is a clear distinction, for instance German: du/Sie, in Slavic languages: ti/Vi etc.

 

I'm just following my course book and trying to apply explained rules in Chinese.

 

Hippocrene Beginner's Chinese_1.tif

[roddy]

Keep reading a paragraph or two...

[Sinisa]

5 minutes ago, Publius said:

teacher-student relationship is considered close

 

I didn't know it was the case; I'm was told that when talking about family members, de is dropped.

[Sinisa]

OK, so the conclusion is that instead of nǐmende, de is not used because of the closeness of the relation of teacher (which is mentioned in the text), and student (which is somehow context-perceived and unmentioned).

[889]

But don't get carried away and adopt that as your rule. Like Publius said, prosody has a big influence on Chinese speech: a sentence has to bounce along to the right beat.

 

So you'd ask: 你的老师叫什么名字？

[Sinisa]

Qui lente procedit, sanus et longe procedit 

[evn108]

Isn't it also the case that you can often omit all 的 except the last one in cases where you have a chain of things modifying the noun? 

[imron]

13 hours ago, Sinisa said:

so the conclusion is that instead of nǐmende, de is not used because of the closeness of the relation of teacher

No, I think it's more because of the second 的 in the sentence a few characters later.  It makes things sound awkward so that 的 gets dropped

 

[imron]

13 hours ago, Sinisa said:

your is not a plural form of you (personal pronoun), it is a possesive pronoun (more precisely: determiner).

Corresponding possesive pronoun to English your is nǐmende.

Correct.  Only in this case the 'de' has been elided.  In your original sentence there's an implicit 'de' at the end of 'nimen' that turns it into the possessive pronoun