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- "Your last name is Wang."
"Your last name is Wang."
Translation:你姓王。
23 Comments
Am I blind, or does duolingo/this course not teach any definitions for these words?
They do not. The idea is to have you learn it like you were dropped off in the country where no one speaks your language. People tend to remember their mistakes better then a lesson.
Duolingo is an absolutilly great way to learn but I recommend that it not be your only source of learning.
Stick with it.
No it doesnt. If you learn any other language they tell you the pronounciation AND the meaning. I did the whole numbers section without anybody telling me which word correspond with half the numbers. I am not telling that they should tell you everything, i get how duolingo works, but atleast the meaning of the words should be there, not just telling me, hey, this is a word in chinese, remember it.
It would be good if they told you that was the idea. I had no clue and thought I was missing a part of the lessons
Huge problem for me, I wish they had the definition of the words when you had to match them to the sounds
In fact, they do teach the definitions for these words. They are at https://www.duolingo.com/skill/zs/Name/tips. I suggest that you check the tips out before you start a lesson.
If you are entirely new to Chinese, you can click on any part of the text with a dotted underline, & it will show an explanation/definition of the term/Chinese character. It introduces explanations to terms like "initial", "final", "tone", etc.
34
Guys, first thing you should know about Chinese is that Chinese characters(words) are way different than those of the Indo-European languages.
One single word can be used as noun, verb, adverb, or adjective without any changes both to its writting and pronounciation. As to the meaning, things are pretty tricky, let's put it on the back burner. Upon their charaterisics changing, ususally their meanings do not change, it is their positions in the sentence as well as their auxiliary words that do the modifying.
As in this case, e.g. Your last name is Wang. In the given answer 你姓王, 姓 functions as a verb here, however there is no corresponding verb in English. The literal translation would be “你的姓是王。" Note that in Chinese, 姓 only refers to one's last name. Since last name is family name, you don't "name" someone's family name, so you cannot translate 姓 to "name(neither verb nor noun)".
你的(your)姓(last name)是(is)王(Wang)。
Same as other languages, literal translations are always awkward, at least colloquially. When talking about one's last name, like in this example, Chinese people would simply say 你姓王; 我姓王（My last name is Wang); 他/她姓王(His/Her last name is Wang). Duo's answer is perfectly correct and natural.
There are words that can mean completely different even if none of its charactors change.
Here comes a tricky one. 你是王，this can be "you are (the person whose last name is) Wang". 王 is the last name; or "you are the QUEEN", 王 is "the queen".
To make sense, I add a definite article "the" before "queen", which doesn't appear in the Chinese sentence. Please don't take it too literally, there is only one queen in a particular area after all.
As you can see, nothing but the meaning changed. I agree with @Renard_Urbain, Chinese is all about the context.^_^
Uh, can you maybe translate into English when you are commenting? Not that many people can understand you speak Chinese.
你可不可以以后用英语在这说话？有一些人不理解你说中文。
Wow, I cannot do that yet. Where did you learn it? Or did you know chinese before? Still REALLY COOL.
Tapping on the word shows the translation. Don't rule out any possibilities. Play with the app and the lesson. I've learned each word, its meaning, and the pinyin version. This app is great so far.
- 73
why is "jiao" not including when that character correlates with calling someone a name. wouldn't it be "wo jiao xing li'?
in this context, 姓 (xing4) is used as a verb, so that would be like saying "I am called surnamed Li". Also there's no English equivalent for 姓(v.) or 叫 so I just used surnamed.
- 603
Why is there no 'de' or 'shi' like in the other questions? Like 'ni de shing shi wang' or whatever... I think the other question was something like 'ni de ming zi shi shen me?' so it needed the de and the shi... and this doesn't? Why? (I hope this made sense)
It would be good to press a tile and hear the sound for symbols after a failed translation.
