"叫我张明。"
Translation:Call me Zhang Ming.
179 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1342
In Chinese, the last name (also called "family name") appears before the first name. So in English, we have to flip the order. 张明 = Ming Zhang
It's slightly confusing because we intentionally call them "first" and "last" names because that's how they appear in English. But for languages that don't follow this convention, it becomes a misnomer.
2806
I think in real life the original order is occasionally retained in English, but it's probably very context/speaker/target-dependent? A Chinese person might feel much more comfortable hearing their full (Chinese) name in Chinese order - English order might sound weird and unfamiliar. Of course there's a decent chance they just use an English name in English-speaking contexts, in which case English order seems obvious.
Some insight into the matter from a Chinese person would be nice.
Duo accepts both orders, for what it's worth.
63
My friends and I usually have three names or a Christian/English name, so we use that or the other two (non-family) names. For those with two, we use the "Chinese" arrangement, so here you would call him Zhang Ming.
1801
If, by call, you mean say aloud, then call the person Zhang Ming. Although if this hypothetical situation was taking place outside of China (or even within, if you looked like a foreigner), the person wouldn't fault you for saying the first name first. Generally speaking, for Chinese names, when both the first name and the surname are one character, call the person by his/her full name, in the surname/first name order. When the first name has two characters, then it's fine to call the person by only his/her first name.
Yes, the surname 张
and the measure word for flat objects 张
(e.g., "一张纸" / yì zhāng zhǐ / one sheet of paper) are both pronounced with the first tone: "zhāng
".
Many other common Chinese surnames also share their characters with common words: 马
(mǎ - "horse"), 李
(lǐ - "plum"), 林
(lín - "forest"), and so on. You can generally tell from context whether these characters refer to surnames or one of their other meanings in sentences.
Westerners may have their names transliterated, striving to make their Chinese names as phonetically similar to their original names as possible. These names are often recognizable because they tend to be longer than usual, as well as retain Western first-last name order.
Alternatively, others may adopt (often with the guidance of a native speaker) a name consisting of a common Chinese surname followed by a one- to two-character given name, often selected based on the meaning of the character(s).
3421
English and Mandarin Chinese have different name orders. They are switched between translations because of that cultural context. Without it, one of the translations will appear unusual.
Pinyin is the standard way to Romanize Chinese. It was developed by the People's Republic of China with help from Russia, so maybe it's more intuitive if you speak Russian, I wouldn't know. The good news is that pinyin is phonetic and very straightforward--you just need to learn the rules. Not all of the letters behave the way they do in English. Chinese has sounds that we don't have, and vice versa. I hope that someday Duo will include pinyin instruction for people who haven't learned it elsewhere. I recommend searching the internet for a resource to teach you pinyin. Or, put in a lot of time listening to the recordings here on Duo until you get the hang of it!
813
I got the lessons 你叫张明, 我叫张明 and 叫我张明 in a row and I'm getting the impression that 张明 and his friend think I'm a bit dim.
208
It's very very simple so that it became hard I think it's just as easy as you train yourself speaking it
Was a little hard for me because personally, I love the Chinese language but it seems very difficult.
1652
Frankly, I prefer that for Chinese names, keep them exactly as they are ordered in Chinese. Flipping the first and last names like this can be very confusing.
If you say wo Jiao ......are you only giving what in English would be your first name or given name and if you say wo xing ......are you only giving your family name? Operative word in my question is "only". Thanks.