"我叫张明，你叫什么名字？"
Translation:I am Zhang Ming, what is your name?
196 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
名字 means "name", so without it, it's "What are you called?" and with it it's "What is your name?" which are basically the same at least, that's from my understanding
How would the sentence look like if it were formed as "你叫什么名？ " - wouldn't it also be "what is your name?"
I wrote "what is your first name" and it got declined :-)
名 by itself is weird. Even though it does mean "name" most Chinese words will use 2 symbols just to "feel right" as my teacher told me. Also 名字 means name not first name. So when you ask for a person's 名字, you're asking for their full name
"Ming" is like an Imcomplete word. For it to have context in the phrase it needs the "zì" (I don't have Chinese caracters sorry). At least that's what I think, hole it helped
I'm a native speaker. 名字 means name. And it can be literally translated as " What name are you called?"
The tooltips give that as first name, leading us to believe the sentence asks for a first name.
Hello, why is there a comma in the Mandarin phrase and a period in the English phrase? Is that just a typo?
I read this logically as "you are called what - personal name?" The - indicating the 么, which I think of inferring a question or showing the beginning of a question. Correct?
223
In ancient, 字 was definitely so, but in modern Chinese 名字 means rather given name as a whole. I wrote about it in other my post.
It just doesn't sound so great to omit 名字, it's less formal. It's like "What're you called" vs. "What is your name?"
It would be more formal. But I feel we never really say that. We just ask "你叫什么"
adding 名字 makes it describe more to the topic without it the person your speaking to might say it in a answer you don't know or a answer you did not expect so if you add 名字 they know you are talking about their name.
名字 for full name 叫 for like " You can call me..." 姓 for Last name or Family name
I also thought that. What I understood was that, it's just an other word for 叫 (jiào) which means ‘name’.
We are in a very very basic, simplest level .
Why does he have to pronounce so fast at this very early stage ?!?
It would be wonderful to have a progress bar underneath audio playbacks that function similar to YouTube videos: you could change the playback to 0.5x; and use the slider/pause to replay only parts of the sentence, back it up, and listen to just that section again (the accents of "什么名字" is throwing me off, but I have to play the whole thing just to listen to the middle section)
Same here. My best friend speaks chinese and i want to battle who can speak chinese better, but its so fast.
- 66
That's true, although the speed is average or slightly slower than that. It'd be great to have a 0.25 to 2 speed playback option!
"What's " and "what is" are literally the same thing and it said I used the wrong word?
I don't get it very well.. 什么 means this is a question... each of this characters (什) or (么) means "what", and both together means "what" too... Could someone explain this a little better?
Don't even bother dissecting compound words when starting out. Many individual chars have their own meaning, but words rarely consist of only one character in Chinese. 玻璃 meaning "glass" is made up of what amounts to basically two nonsense characters that only mean glass when used together, but this means that sloppy dictionaries and such will still list either char as glass, regardless of the fact that they are barely ever used on their own.
什么 is fixed. As is the case with every language, there are plenty of synonyms such as 啥 or 何, but they require a certain context or register and shenme is much more ubiquitous in modern Putonghua.
I highly recommend you download the zhongwen pop-up extension for your browser, it features plenty of grammar notes, properly segments words and allows you to quickly look up characters without switching tabs.
Classical Chinese was largely monosyllabic. Modern Chinese is largely disyllabic. You will need two characters and two syllables to form most words nowadays. Even "what" in English is formed of two parts, the "wha" part that is the same as what we see in "who" and "why", and then a "t" neuter suffix.
Although in one sense it is correct to say that the English "what" is formed of two parts, it is not in the same sense as the Chinese polysyllabic word. Rather, the modern "what" derived from the Old English "hwaet" which was the neuter form of the masc./fem. "hwa". Modern English has no real sense of this left. We have lost our declensions almost accross the board and also our differentiation in grammatical gender to the extent that it is practically non-existant. A more accurate comparison would be compund words, such as "hearsay" or "jackpot". These are compound words where we tend to think of them as one word today. We can see that they came from two free morphemes, but the meaning is not obviously drawn from those morphemes, say in the way "houseboat" is. In Chinese it is much the same, except most words in Chinese have become compounds. This is in great part due, no doubt, to the extraordinary amount of homophones that have arisen during the long development of the Chinese language. I believe that a better Chinese comparison to our "hwaet/what" and "hwa/who" would be 什(what/miscellany)(shen2/shi2) and 谁(who)(shei2/shui2). The connection between these can be better seen in the characters 什(shen2/shi2) and 雜(za2)(miscellaneous/mixed), which at one time were likely synonyms, seen in the alternate use and pronunciation of 什 (shi2), Hokkien use of 什 and also in the Cantonese pronunciation and uses of 什 (zaap6) and 雜 (zaap6). Interestingly, this discussion uses the same words (who and what), and in both languages the long history of the languages change has obscured the etymology of the spoken words, but our writing in both cases has retained that history.
"What" is one word. The "t" has nothing to do with neutral. It is simply the last letter.
I would have preferred if they structured these lessons the same way they did with French. These lessons were more difficult since they did not have any translation on the onset.
Yes, it might be easier to remember the characters if we knew what they meant when they were first being introduced. With this structure, you have to learn the character knowing nothing but the sound, and then try to associate that with a meaning in one or two questions in the last part of the lesson.
I find that it works best to just follow the course as it is. In my very short experience the course seems perfectly planned and repetitive enough to allow us to discover the subtle meaning of the different combinations and syntax involved... After all Chinese is not a language one can easily compare to Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Romanian, Portuguese or English, or to German. It is a different system and it requires a different approach both to teach it and to learn it.
I was frustrated at first, too. I started to write the Chinese characters as they were introduced. By the time, the meanings were given, the characters were familiar to my mind.
It might be helpful if they were fewer, yet for the Chinese word we simetimes must use more than one character. We do not have the advantage of a phonetic alphabet such Korean, Spanish or the Japanese katakana.
- 66
As a tip: 1 character=字，2 characters=词，3 or more characters (can be) 短语，4 fixed characters=成语，more than four fixed characters (variable, can be) 谚语、歇后语……
Both of these characters 明 and 名 seem to be pronounced the same, Míng. What is the difference? And hiw to distinguish them in speech?
The exercise is wrong, few words are missing in the translation, fir example "is"
The first sentence has been translated with: My name is .... In this sentence My name is is wrong. It has to be I'm ... Why is that?
How come they don't define these words before they ask you for definitions? I have absolutely no clue what I'm looking at and feel like I'm doing this wrong
I feel like there are few lessons in actually using Duolingo. Is there a way to be taught the words/phrases/grammar before being tested?
Anyone else feel like the slowed down version makes it even harder to understand?
I did "what's your name" but it said i needed to do "what is your name" isn't that the same thing?
It's the same. Just make sure you put in the apostrophe and didn't write "whats". I hope you reported it!
I am a native speaker and "你叫什么名字“ literally translates to -you are called what name
Oke I have to say that the speech part is too dificult in the beginning. Not so much to decipher the meaning or tonation but the speed with which you have to say them and the lenght of the sentences. It is like learning English and to expect someone to pronounce a sentence with th- ch- ao- at native speed. Just try to say "That very thick aorta threatens to burst if it changes to sudden." Probably a lot of non native speakers will not be able to complete it fully at high speed.
Why not cut it up further in the begining?
名字 means "name", so without it, it's "What are you called?" and with it it's "What is your name?" which are basically the same at least, that's from my understanding
In the second sentence the word in English 'your called' should be really 'you're called'. It is a common spelling error in English.
The suggestion translation 'I'm Ming Zhang, what's yours?' isn't good English.
It marked me wrong only because my PUNCTUATION MARK wasn't the same as the answer! And there is no option to report that! This is irritating!
This sequence is once translated as "What is your name?", and yet in another instance as w"What is your full name?" ...
The clues do write "everything" under one of the characters, so I think that "What is your name?" or "What is your full name?" should both be accepted in both instances. Is there a reason why they shouldn't that I do not see? Thasnks moderators. DUOLINGO is great.
Suggest the translation "I am Ming Zhang" should be accepted. Was told I used the wrong word and corrected to "I'm Ming Zhang". It's easier to type "I am" than I'm" when using the phone app.
I guess what is and what's don't have any difference but it says that it's incorrect lol
on the "matching pages" or the "write in English" pages, the Chinese characters are too small
Mainly i study from the app on my android phone. When I can get to a laptop/desktop I sign into web to see the characters larger, write them on note cards for later.
- 66
Extra knowledge:
1 character=字，2 characters=词，3 or more characters (can be) 短语，4 fixed characters=成语，more than four fixed characters (variable, can be) 谚语、歇后语、俗语、名句 or even 名言、佳句……
Fixed characters often (always?) have "origin stories" or are taken from famous works of famous writers and authors e.g. poems and each 朝代 (era, dynasty) has its own form e.g. 唐诗、宋词、散文、小说 that was developed and perfected in that period of time.
A short (and not at all comprehensive) note on Chinese "words, phrases, idioms, sayings".
Edit: There are different ways of calling them, e.g. 三字成语、四字成语、五字成语、六字、七字、八字、九字，but this is not the most important.
This is interesting history and the different types of Chinese idioms are fun, but it is a complete aside from this thread. Also, 成语 do occasionally have five fixed characters I believe. Any way, at this point in the program most people are struggling with individual character recognition and word formation from those characters. Recognizing set idioms and word plays is a mysterious manor atop a far off misty mountain.
- 66
That's right, and there are 三字、六七八九字成语 as well. However, I would call those by another name and this is confusing at this stage, and not really important overall. I am sorry you find it irrelevant, perhaps posting this elsewhere would be better. This post is for those who are interested.
I would like pronunciation so you could actually say things right/know what hes saying
- 66
I am not sure if the audio is working, but in any case the correct pronunciation is as follows:
Wo3 jiao4 Zhang1 Ming2, ni3 ne?
I don't understand why the tone of certain words, when given separately as a word recognition test, sound wrong. eg xing is written 4th tone, but sounds (to me) as definitely 1st tone. Yet when it's given in a sentence it does sound 4th tone. shi (written2nd tone) sounds to me as 4th tone. There seems to me - in certain words - a discrepancy between the tone in isolated words and in sentences. Also the consonant in shi in isolation also sounds like zhi. I realize consonants can be difficult to get right, though it does sound like 'sh' in the context of sentences, but it's the differences that are confusing, particularly in some tones. I know tones can change in a sentence (eg 'bu') but I thought words in isolation should be presented in their dictionary tone.
- 66
Some of it is what you have to listen carefully and learn to recognised, but others are examples of when they differ from what you call their dictionary tone, e.g. 一 and 不 which can, depending on what follows, be tones 1, 2, 3 and 1, 2 respectively. There are also word with many tones or pronunciations or both with different meanings for each one. These are known as 多音多义字, e.g. 好 (hao3 or hao4) and 长 (chang2 or zhang3). Duolingo gives the dictionary tone and is generally pretty accurate to me, though I sometimes mute it as, for example, it is grating to hear the typical dictionary pronunciation when it is really something else.
Would be great if we could have the phonetic spelling underneath the characters
- 995
The audio for the last character in "What's your name?" just doesn't sound right to me. When you listen to the characters individually, it's pronounced like "fu," but when the sentence is put together, it's pronounced like "za." Am I missing something?
I'm just guessing at this point. Pronouns, verbs.... it's all mashed up with no explanations. Full phrases??? I guess I'm supposed to be subdued-- er, enlightened with repetition.
So you can bot traslate with the persons name in oppisite order Zang Ming instead of Ming Zhang?
"I'm" and "I am" are the same in English. First informal, the second formal.
You can also use : My name is Ming Zhang . What's your name But it checked and said it was wrong .
我叫 = I'm called or My name? Or Both? What is the literal translation and do people use both ways interchangeably?
- 639
For the fifth time or so today, I do have a Chinese word bank,so I cannot give an answer. This is most frustrating.
I have a question about names, if my name is Devin, how would I write it in Chinese? Would I just have to write it in English characters? Or are there some kind of characters that you would put together to make it sound like Devin?
- 66
You can choose, technically, although there is usually a convention, especially for "common" foreign (to Chinese) names, e.g. 大卫 for David, 艾玛 for Emma, and so on. If you do the Chinese to English course, which is likely best after you finish this one, there are examples of these in the exercises. As it is, I'm not sure what yours could be, will update here if I find out.
If you want to retain the actual sound of your given name it is probaby best to just say and write "Devin". First, you won't be able to produce the same phonetics in Mandarin using Chinese characters and secondly, any other Chinese dialect or people using the same characters in their language (Japanese...) will pronounce those characters differently. In that case your name will not sound at all the way you intended. Keep in mind that your legal name is the same, but you can go by various names at various times and occasions. This is very well understood in China. You may be given a name there "officially" using characters that might try to reproduce or capture part of the sound of your name, but you might decide you want a more natural sounding name (or your friends/ colleagues may gift you a name or nicknames). There are several web pages that can help you learn more about finding a suitable Chinese name if you wish. Here are two:
https://www.hackingchinese.com/how-to-find-a-suitable-chinese-name/
http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/how-to-choose-a-chinese-name
Need be patient when someone is trying say word right its skips whole thing like person cant even talk
- 1109
No option of word "name" is provided in the word list. Therefore, I cannot choose and I am wrong every time.
So I got everything correct, but I didn't use punctuation or white spaces. I shouldn't be marked down for not using punctuation, should I? Is punctuation required in Mandarin Chinese?
Very fast reader. Have a hard time understanding but gets easier with practice
- 168
I'm not confused, just an observation: "What is" is the same as "What's" I got this answer incorrect because I use "What's" instead of "What is..."
- 189
How could I politely ask the name of a server at a restaurant, without being blunt? Could I say "Qing ni, ni jiao shen me zi ming"?
On this particular set I am able to write "My name is Zhang Ming, what " there arent enough speech bubbles to get this
Ming zi means name so if you said hey my name is... you would translate it with ming zi for name hooe that helps!
- 1026
How can we translate when there is only one selectable name on the field, there is no way to translate 我叫张明，你叫什么名字 without two name icons.
This said i did it wrong because i forgot to add the '?' though i had the same question different name 'li hua' didn't use ? got it right... so not sure if it's consistantly requesting punctuation.
Aaaargh!! I got wrong on this question because of App fault. You wanted me to put name and there was no name.
I've heard that 名字 is more formal. Would it be strange to follow "我叫 x
- 223
Fun fact. Originally, in ancient, 名 meant their given name and 字 meant their nickname. In the Chinese then culture it was rude and even cursing to call someone their given name, so nickname was widely used. For example, poet 白居易 was referred as 白楽天 with his 字 in his contemporary texts. Today it seems this custom ceased and 名字 means rather their given names normally, but sometimes full names.
Did it not have the necessary English words for anyone else? Mine was missing "is" and "name"
These lessons went from learning to say and recognize a single number to saying all this. ❤❤❤ Duolingo
So, duolingo write me that I have mistake. I wrote: "My name's Zhang Ming. What's your name?" "My name is Zhang Ming, what is your name?" "I'm Zhang Ming, what's your name?" "I am Zhang Ming, what is your name?" (Just copy, but againg mistake -_-)
What?!
- 160
I found it strange when I said what my name was. There not enough words left on the list to ask what is your name.
What is the difference between"My name is Li hua"and "I am Li hua" in Chinese?please help
- 183
I am Zhang Ming, what is your name? This is my very first time. The sound is very good. :) :)