Dài huì ér jiàn - 待会儿见

[Mike]

I don't understand how 待会儿见 becomes "See you later!".

Dài - Intend to

huì - possible / be able

ér - some thing I don't understand!

jiàn - meet

Can I use "Dài huì ér jiàn" in the same way I use it in English, that is to mean see you in the near future, later today, tomorrow, next week, soon anyway?

:-)

P.S roddy, my smilies are not working ?

[gougou]

Dai4 in this case means to wait (or something close to that). The next two characters are not hui4 er2, but hui4r, which means a while, some time. Jian4 as the last should be familiar, it works like in 明天见 (ming2tian1 jian4) (see you tomorrow), for example.

So the whole sentence would be "wait a while, see" - See you later.

PS: For more information about the 儿, check out this thread (among others): pronounciation question

[Mugi]

In this case 待 should be pronounced in the first tone (dāi)

(Also, you might like to note that 会儿 is usually pronounced in the third tone (huǐr) in Beijing and environs.)

[xiaoxiajenny]

We say dai1 hui er3 jian4 待会儿见/回见

[roddy]

P.S Roddy, my smilies are not working ?

Mine are.

If they're still not working, try hitting CTRL+F5 to force a full reload of the page.

There's a thread in Bugs / Help for any current problems. I can't guarantee I'll see anything posting anywhere else.

Roddy

[Mike]

So in 待会儿见 - 会儿 is pronounced 'hui4 er4' or as gougou points out 'huir4' - although I notice that CEDICT has huir3?

Further to my initial post, in 待会儿见, how long can 会儿 be ?

=================

Hey roddy my smilies are working all on their own

[gougou]

Oh, never mind me if everyone else says third tone...

[Yuchi]

Further to my initial post, in 待会儿见, how long can 会儿 be ?

It usually indicates a short period of time (5 minutes maybe?), but it could also just be said just to be said, some people are like that.

[mtrueman]

Please note that 待会儿见 may also be written as 呆会儿见. The pronunciation is generally dai1 hui4r jian! (although as was mentioned, dai1 hui3r jian4 is indeed used by some Beijing speakers).

With respect to duration, my experience in Beijing is that this expression is most frequently used for durations of less than, say, 1 hour; also, in my experience, this expression doesn't seem to differ much in meaning/usage from 一会儿见. In contrast, the expression 到时见/到时见 is more likely to be used for longer time horizons.