"他的妻子不高。"
Translation:His wife is not tall.
29 Comments
Got a question. I took Mandarin Chinese from a native speaker several years ago, and I'm brushing up. The word we used for wife was 太太. Is that more of a pet name? Dialect difference?
2112
妻子 is the formal way to write it, but in speech you'll probably hear 太太 (formal) and 老婆 (colloquial) more often. But China is huge, so it depends on where you are. I think in northern China 太太 might be old-fashioned, but in Taiwan it's still very common.
You may also hear 愛人, 女人, 夫人, 內人, 媳妇, 拙荊, and a bunch of other terms for wife, if you travel around.
- 1639
Came to ask the same question, 太太 (tàitai) is used in the Pimsleur course. Google translates it as "Mrs", so I guess "他的太太" would more literally mean "His Mrs"? (used in some dialects of English)
Would be good to know which is more common/colloquial.
- 259
no, 他 means 'he' (3 person, singular, male), 她 on the other hand means 'she' (also 3 person, singular, but female). They have the same pronunciation 'tā' (on 1st tone)
i enter 'His wife is short', and it's wrong? Mind, when I say my wife is short i get that look, so maybe it's right
- 285
I'm just wondering how the Chinese culturally see height of people. Is a short wife less preferable than a tall one, since I see in the questions that being pretty and tall are often associated, but pretty is not associated when it is a short wife. Is it the same for men? Are taller Chinese men more popular?
- 285
Another question. Why do I use hen 是 associated with 'being pretty' sometimes and other times not? Like "am I pretty" has no 是 before it in question form, such as 我 漂亮 吗 ? But if I say "your girlfriend is tall and pretty", then 是 is used before piao liang such as 是 漂亮
I think you typed 是 (shì) when you intended 很 (hěn). Here are the combinations that you might see:
她漂亮嗎？ Is she pretty?
她很漂亮嗎？Is she very pretty?
她很漂亮。She is pretty.
她不漂亮。She is not pretty.
It really isn't. "not tall" implies there's nothing spectacularly significant about his height. It's like saying "not bad" is the same thing as good. It just doesn't work like that.
Nope, not necessarily. Not for heteronormativity reasons (我是双性恋) but because tā (him) and tā (her) are two different characters. If you heard it audio wise it should work but not written. The she pronoun uses the woman radical, and the he pronoun uses standing person.
