"你明白吗？"
Translation:Do you understand?
14 Comments
Can anyone here explain the etymology of 明白？ "bright white"? from "to be enlightened" maybe?
你明白嗎？
The Taiwanese pronunciation is "nǐ míngbái ma" and "ma" actually sounds like "mā" here.
If you are interested, there are many words the last syllable of which is pronounced in "light tone" in mainland China (colloquial) but the original tone in Taiwan.
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It doesn't necessarily have to have happened in the past to add 了. It just indicates a completed action, so you might "have understood", but that could be right now or a few minutes ago. There is no past tense in Mandarin.
There is a bug. I chose exactly the right words, identical to the solution and it was nevertheless marked incorrect. It did not offer me the option to report that my answer should have been accepted. Kaput.
according to the HSK radical chart, bai2 is white...what makes bai2 'understand' here? https://www.hsk.academy/en/learn/the-chinese-radicals
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I think 明白 literally means "(the situation) is clear to me, cause that would make sense; 明 means bright after all, and I think together with 白, they mean bright and clear. "understand" as one word would be 懂, but I remember reading somewhere that it means more like understanding what the person said, the words they used. I imagine 明白, or more specifically “你明白了吗？” being used after a long (or short) explanation of the situation one's in.
Why is "Do you get it?" wrong??? Isn't it a more natural and common expression in English???
That is more colloquial, and can appear impolite if used with strangers and authority figures.
