"他姓王。"
Translation:His last name is Wang.
30 Comments
Tā is written different based on the radicals, but pronounced the same way, 他 breaks down into 2 parts, 人 which is "man" (the left part of the character) and 也 which means "also" or "other" - so literally speaking this character means "other male person". Female on the other hand is still Tā but is written as 她 where the first radical comes from 女 meaning "female".
Yes. I almost put that, but then it occurred to me that it is very useful to remember this phrase specifically if you are telling someone about the fact that the last name is always placed in the first position in Chinese. I answered "last name" also to help me learn all the characters since I find learning this language to be quite a different challenge.
So the middle character is xing and when pronounced on its own sounds like "shin"
but in the sentence the middle character sounds much different. What's going on there?
137
Yes. It sounds like "s'i/shi" in this audio. And the first character sounds like "pa/pha" here, but not like "ta"
- 1561
This feels like it was chosen to trip up students with a background in Chinese... Putting a sentence like that in a lesson about occupations would definitely get someone to mistranslate it as ‘he is a king’, haha.
This question appears to be broken; the correct answer is apparently wrong. https://i.imgur.com/P2EH7JU.jpg
- 227
I asked my Chinese friend this a while back. The confusion is that 'xing' is a verb which means 'having the surname'
He has the surname Wang makes sense.
His has the surname Wang doesn't make sense.
- 1067
That is correct, my friend. Though it would be otherwise, in the context of naming a surname, 姓 is a verb, not a noun.
How did you deducted "his"in your second example (which doesn't make sense) I see symbol for "he" and the unknown one, does it turn 'he' to 'his?
lol...I accidentally translated it into German instead of English. I'm native German, living in Texas. And so it begins. The mixing of all my languages...
If i want to say "is wang his last name" all I have to do is add ma. Right??
I didn't know what's the difference between "last name" and "surname" they mean the same...
"他" means "he/him" and "她" means "she/her". You can use either "他們" or "她們" for they/them.
Ta does not choose the gender. This marks she wrong. It randomly chooses the gender for ta.
It does based on the key on the character though? If it's the "T" shaped-key at the start of "ta" it's male, if it's the vaguely "4" shaped-key it's female. There's no oral indication as far as I know, however.
