"leave something somewhere"

[NinjaTurtle]

I am having trouble translating "leave something somewhere" in Chinese. How do you say,

"I didn't bring my cellphone to school, I accidentally left it in the dorm this morning,."

[Flickserve]

留下手机在。。。

[Jim]

That's 落 read là as well - 今天没带手机上学，早上不小心给落在宿舍

[NinjaTurtle]

Do 留下 and 落  have the idea of accidentally leaving something behind but not the idea of intentionally leaving something behind?

[陳德聰]

落 is right for accidentally left, 留 sounds intentional.

[NinjaTurtle]

My next questions on this topic:

 

I was at a Starbucks in China, and the lady working there had lunch delivered. When the deliveryman came, she told him to just leave it on the counter. (I’m not sure of what she said because my listening comprehension in Chinese is about zero.)

 

In Chinese, can we distinguish:

 

“Just put it right there.”

“Just leave it right there.” (leave = put + go)

 

Also, I have been told by my students that we cannot say, “I intentionally left my cellphone in the dorm and came to school” in Chinese. (1) They are wrong, right? (2) There has to be a way to say this in Chinese, for example 留, isn’t there? (Then why would they say that?)

 

[889]

 

You run the risk of creating expressions that don't sound natural if you express yourself using direct translations from English. Instead, consider other ways of getting the same thought across in simple Chinese. Add a why, for exampe, and it becomes clear you didn't just forget your phone: 今天我没带手机。太麻烦！就留在家。

 

[Publius]

Modern Standard Mandarin generally detests the 'verb + object + complement' structure (though 'verb + object' and 'verb + complement' are fine).

This affects a lot of English verbs, like put, leave, bring, etc. Direct translation will result in something very unnatural, even borderline ungrammatical.

The solution is to use the 把 construction:

我把手机忘/落在宿舍了 (accidentally)

我把手机留在宿舍了 (intentionally)

Jim's sentence is very good, natural and colloquial. But the last half is actually passive voice, from the cellphone's point of view.

[Jim]

@Publius I was assuming it was a very smart phone. Ahem.

[roddy]

Is there an opportunity here to use the odd-sounding, but actually very authentic and perfectly legit "在了" combo? Earlier discussion.

 

早上不小心给落在了宿舍

[陳德聰]

+1 I definitely say 落在了房間裡

[tooironic]

You can just say 我把手机忘在/落在宿舍 No need to use 了 or 里 or 不小心.

[陳德聰]

On 5/22/2018 at 3:38 PM, NinjaTurtle said:

In Chinese, can we distinguish:

 

“Just put it right there.”

“Just leave it right there.” (leave = put + go)

I missed this, but does "leave it" really mean that? I don't think "leave behind" is always implied by "leave."

 

I am pretty sure it means "put it there and don't move it" or "put it there and it stays there" or "allow it to remain there." Or perhaps there are multiple senses of the English word "leave (sth. somewhere)" and some of them are essentially the same thing in practice.

 

For example, I think you can actually achieve "put" and "leave" (as in allow it to stay put) with 放 and 放著.

[roddy]

6 hours ago, tooironic said:

No need to use 了 or 里 or 不小心.

Necessary, maybe not. But what’s the point of learning Chinese if you don’t get to scatter 了s around.