"听了这个新闻，他难过地哭了。"
Translation:After he heard the news, he cried sadly.
43 Comments
"Hearing this news he cried sadly." I think this is much closer to the original Chinese.
This is a classic example of the mixing up 的/地/得 usage that is increasingly common even amongst native speakers. Your translation is correct for 地, while Duolingo's translation given would require a 得 in the Chinese sentence.
This makes sense as I've heard the three were originally the same word and as languages are spoken natively and the technology of writing must be learned, this seems really similar to the rise of bad spelling and orthography of English speakers.
Yes "cry sadly" is redundant and unnatural sounding to this native English speaker. Crying implies sadness and you would need to write in specifically when crying due to any other emotion.
Then again, coming across this a few more times I now find "He sadly cried" to be idiomatic English. At least it sounds natural to me. Sometimes languages are redundant for emphasis.
197
I came here to argue this point, but in my opinion "he sadly cried" implies that it the sadness is a reflection of the situation rather than the feelings of the person. For example: There was an expensive ornament on the shelf, it sadly fell down and broke. However when one says "he cried sadly", the sadness here sounds like a description of "his" emotions of sadness. An example to this would be: The little girl's lollipop fell on the ground, she cried sadly. P.S. I am neither a linguist nor a native, so correct me if I'm wrong.
+1 - in English there is cried sadly - this should just be cried or very upset
- 42
He was so upset that he cried -> 他难过得哭(起来)了
他难过地哭了 -> he cried in an upset fashion
- 767
I see that you have tried to spell out for us the different meanings of two different ways to interpret the Chinese sentence: first (where de is preferentially written 得), as a complement of result, and second, interpreted as a straight forward adverbial, marked with the usual 地. As pointed out elsewhere in this discussion thread, the 3 de's, 的 / 地 / 得 are often confused or at least merged in writing not only by non-Chinese, but increasingly also by some native speakers. The character 的 is probably less subject to confusion. It makes noun modifiers out of nouns, pronouns, or adjectives, but can also be used to make noun equivalents out of adectives or more complex modifiers by implying an unstated noun head. The character 得 can be used in various types of complements, that often can be rendered as some kind of adverbial, making it somewhat more subject to confusion with the 地 of many simple adverbials.
- 767
Sorry my post didn't end up as a reply to the person whose name, that through some Android DL app glitch is not displayed for me, but whose icon / avatar says "keep right" but the arrow points left.
I think the 了 strongly implies that the hearing of the news had been finished before he cried.
- 767
Chinese word order generally follows the order of the temporal and logical / causal sequence, whereas in English we often violate that order for emphasis or stylistic considerations. So in English we might just as well say: He got so upset he cried after hearing the news.
- 383
People cry because they are happy or angry or sad, the adverb just clarifies which it is here. The news could just as easily been good news.
- 448
Exactly. Only in that case, he would have cried happily: 他高兴地哭了。 I think that's why "难过地" is here: to distinguish it from happy crying. As English speakers, we aren't used to seeing this, because it's implied that someone cries because he is sad. But we need to get used to the idea that other languages often handle things differently.
I put "Listening to this news he sadly cried", which seems to be a good translation.
I just answered with "On hearing this news he sadly cried" and was corrected with the ungrammatical "After hearing this news, he was sad he cried." - I reported both.
I entered "After he heard this news, he sadly cried." which should be accepted given the official answer.
The suggested answer was "After hearing this news, he was sad he cried." which is not grammatically correct English.
"Sadly cried" is also a pretty strange phrase in English. I suppose it might make sense if, in Chinese, one needs to clarify whether the crying is joyful or tragic, but in English, it'd be better to morph "sadly cried" into the verb "wept" which is specifically a mournful type of crying.
Followup: "After hearing this news, he sadly cried." and, for that matter, "When hearing this news, he sadly cried." are now accepted answers.
However, I entered "When hearing this news, he tragically cried." this time around and that was rejected and should probably be accepted.
This sentence should use the word 以后, I mean you don't have to but you are trying to get English speakers to associate Chinese words with Chinese words and After is 以后 so it should be 听了这个新闻以后，他难过的哭了。
- 1506
Native here. “sadly” and “cry” together may sound redundant to English speakers, but this redundancy is quite common in Chinese (maybe for rhythm of speaking). Similarly, people also say “开心地笑了 (gladly smiled)”.
Both sadly cried and cried sadly are grammatically correct for English and sound bizarre and ridiculous also.
"ting le zhe ge xin wen" doesn't seem to have a subject, so I thought it could be from our own perspective where we heard the news so it makes sense to us that he cried. For example, this type of sentence could be said where we see a friend crying after hearing that he/she had a loved one that passed away.
I'm not sure what's going on here, in this discussion the translation is represented as "After he heard the news, he cried sadly" but when I got it "wrong" in the actual Q & A the "correct answer" presented was: After he heard this news, he was sad he cried.
More and more, 个 is becoming a "catch all" measure word. The evolution of language, lol
I put "Upon hearing this news he cried sadly." It should be in the correct answer database.
"听了这个新闻" "Upon hearing this news" "On hearing this news" There should be no after...I can't remember the exact term (past progressive?) but either of the phrases I have suggested mean that the action was in the past but ongoing...as is the Chinese. It's not completely in the past...
