表示 - how do you personally use this term?

[Christa]

Hi guys,

 

I was just looking through a Mandarin term / word frequency list and found 表示 at number 88.

 

This amazed me, as I get by barely using this term at all. Do you use this much? If so, what would you give as the most suitable general translation for it and when do you tend to use it? Doesn't it simply mean "to mean" or is there more to it than that?

 

Would be really interested to hear what you think,

 

Christa

[vellocet]

I don't hear it either.  Do you have the link to that list?  I'd like to take a look at it, even though it seems dodgy.  

[Shelley]

It does mean more than just "to mean" it also means to express, to show, to say, to indicate, to state.

 

I am sure there is more than one way to say these things and so you may have been using one of those.

 

 

[Zbigniew]

I use it fairly frequently, as do the Chinese people I know. It's common in writing - at least in writing of a journalistic kind, which is what I'm most familiar with.

Shelley's assessment of its range of meaning is about right.

[Christa]

1 hour ago, vellocet said:

I don't hear it either.  Do you have the link to that list?  I'd like to take a look at it, even though it seems dodgy.

 

Yes, here it is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Frequency_lists/1-1000  Number 88 seems so improbable...

 

50 minutes ago, Shelley said:

It does mean more than just "to mean" it also means to express, to show, to say, to indicate, to state.

 

I am sure there is more than one way to say these things and so you may have been using one of those.

 

Thanks, Shelley. I thought it must or otherwise however did it get so high up the list?

 

32 minutes ago, Zbigniew said:

I use it fairly frequently, as do the Chinese people I know. It's common in writing - at least in writing of a journalistic kind, which is what I'm most familiar with.

 

That's interesting. Perhaps that means that the Mandarin frequency list I took it from was made up from newspaper articles. I think this is quite common with word frequency lists.

 

 

Maybe I should start using the term more myself...

[Jim]

If you look at the three example sentences at Iciba http://www.iciba.com/表示 then wade through Juuku's usage list http://www.jukuu.com/search.php?q=表示 you can see it in action in a wide range of colloquial, formal and technical contexts so not overly surprised by the frequency, not that I have much sense of what are and aren't common terms though I do admit.

[889]

I can't say I use it much in speech, but it's a very common word in Chinese written at a basic level, like those aforesaid newspaper articles, official speeches and such.. So I'd put it in the must-learn category of vocabulary.

[roddy]

The corpus will almost certainly be based mainly on written sources, and in writing 表示 is basically “said”. 

[abcdefg]

13 hours ago, Christa said:

I was just looking through a Mandarin term / word frequency list and found 表示 at number 88.

 

I hear it all the time on the evening news. "习近平表示。。。“ Literally every network news broadcast uses it at least once, often several times. "李克强表示。。。"

 

Quote

Maybe I should start using the term more myself...

 

No, I don't think you need to. It's excessively formal. Use it much, and you will sound like a newscaster. 

[mungouk]

11 hours ago, Christa said:

here it is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Frequency_lists/1-1000  Number 88 seems so improbable...

 

Hmmm....

 

 

 

 

See also comments at https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/42692-spreadsheet-of-10000-most-frequent-chinese-words-2397-characters/?tab=comments#comment-321378

 

 

[Christa]

8 hours ago, abcdefg said:

No, I don't think you need to. It's excessively formal. Use it much, and you will sound like a newscaster. 

 

What everyone has said leads me to think that abcdefg's advice above is quite right.

 

Interestingly, my own use of Chinese is mainly through conversation and email with Chinese friends. No wonder the term does not come up very much. I really had wondered how it could be number 88...

[陳德聰]

I have removed off-topic posts. If you want to talk numerology please start a thread.

[Bibu]

dear moderator,

 

do what you think it right , thanks.

 

Please also drop poster a notice, otherwise the poster think it is the network make his posting failure.

 

i do mistakE thE topic, sorry..