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- "Have you seen my cell phone?"
"Have you seen my cell phone?"
Translation:你看见我的手机了吗？
42 Comments
Why could we not place 了 right after the verb? What difference does it make in meaning?
I'm wondering the same thing. Maybe placing a 了 would make it sound like the sentence is saying: "did you see my phone" which implies more of a past tense than the implication of: "do you know where my phone is?" Idk if that is correct though, just an idea.
That's pretty close. It's the difference between a completed action in any time frame (verb 了) versus a present state having come into being (sentence 了) with immediate relevance.
For this sentence we can simplify by saying that verb 了 would be like "did you see..." and sentence 了 would be like "have you seen..."
I wanted to put this information higher up on the page for the sake of convenience, but dafadllyn's comment below is on point:
From what I have heard, placing 了 at the end implies something still pending or going on while after the verb implies something that has already happened; closer in meaning to 过.
1005
I think it’s because 看见 is a result complement, i.e. 看 on its own means look but does not include actually seeing. 看见 means to look and see. See 见 is the result.
For verbs that include a result, I think past tense is more natural. For example, “I have seen” is more natural than “I’m seeing”. Probably with or without 了 are both fine for conveying past tense.
Read more here: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Result_complement
Would like to see clarification on this as well, as I think I've only seen it used after verbs, yet here it is explicitly disallowed.
Wondering this too, I thought it was supposed to indicate completion sort of? So Idk why there would be a difference between completion of (seeing) and completion of (seeing cell phone)
I don't understand why an earlier same question that I wrote down where you had to write the answer in English had the 了particle. It was: 你看见我的手机了吗？ Yet here there was no particle
- 445
Seems like this is a mistake on Duo's part. The explanation for this lesson explicitly says:
To ask Have you seen... (when looking for something or someone) use the pattern 你看见 + the thing or person you’re looking for + 了吗？
见 means "to meet" so it wouldn't make any sense on it's own
看 means "to watch"
看见 means "to see"
Yes, it is not clear why in some sentences you add it after the verb and in this sentence in the end
你看见我的手机了吗？I thought this was correct, whereas 你看见我的手机吗？seems to me to mean "Do you see my cell phone?"
My native girlfriend also says that 了would be corect in this sentence....
- 751
What's wrong with putting the object at the beginning of the sentence? I thought that was acceptable in Chinese: 我的手机你看见了吗?
- 279
When the question was "Have you seen her book？" 你看见了她的书了吗？ was accepted. Why not with this question? I only changed who and what...
My sense is of it is as follows (though I defer to native Chinese speakers):
Using only sentence 了 (as in the sentence at hand) makes the question more immediately relevant to the present moment: Have you seen my cell phone, and by implication, can you now tell me where it is?
Using both verb 了 and sentence 了, on the other hand (as in the "book" example), is more an inquiry about life experience: Have you had the opportunity to take a look at her book? (I'm taking liberties with the translation to exaggerate the different sense.)
In the right context (and with the appropriate time phrase) the latter structure is also used to express ongoing duration: I've been living here for five years, and by implication, I'm still living here. 我在这儿住了五年了。
I was given the exact phrase a few minutes ago to translate from chinese to english and the chinese phrase then was "你看见我的手机了吗?". So what is the correct way to say it?
Sometimes when typing what I hear in chinese it tells me i used the wrong word but i'm fairly certain I typed exactly what the correction shows. It would be nice if I could see what I typed along with the correction so I could see where there's a difference.
It just did it again. I'm positive this time that I typed the correct translation for "Have you seen my cellphone?". It tells me I typed an incorrect word.
The problem seems to be that the "le" modifier is missing from the list of charactors.
Should 看到 be an acceptable substitute for 看见 or is there a subtle difference I am missing?
We say 你看见我的手机了吗 not 你看见了我的手机吗 is because that you are not paying attention to the "Have" in the sentence. 你看见我的手机了 means You have seen my phone/cellphone. 吗 makes the question.
- 1060
Context wise this sentence in Chinese and English is that someone has lost there phone and looking for it. Your construction would be correct for a different context, say that you have brought a expensive new phone and you are flexing.
I answered "你有看见我的手机吗?" but it corrected it to "你看见我的手机吗？". Do we not use 有 for the past?
