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- "这家饭馆收现金吗?"
"这家饭馆收现金吗?"
Translation:Does this restaurant take cash?
54 Comments
What role does "家" play in this sentence? I understand in other contexts, it relates to home and family, but what does it mean here?
"家" is a measure word for various establishments e.g.
一家饭馆 - 1 restaurant
三家商店 - 3 shops
五家公司 - 5 companies
"Quantifier" might be more precise, but we're not exactly counting (1, 2, 3....) with these words.
Duolingo should have made a note of teaching Jiā as a classifier(measure word) for building in the little grammar notes.
apparently they consider that part of the curriculum optional. There are several such omissions throughout the course.
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I thought the same thing. I thought it said 'Does this family restaurant take cash?' Glad I wasn't alone here.
Actually there are several places in China, which take only digital paymente by WeChat or Alipay
No. 家 does not mean "family" or home here, it is a "quantifier" or "measure word". English really doesn't have anything similar - this article explains them: https://blogs.transparent.com/chinese/10-must-know-chinese-measure-words/
They're not always rare in English. Consider "four loaves of bread," "two slices of toast," "a cup of tea."
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English does have them, but they're rare and usually specialist language, like "8 head of cattle", whereas you can also say "8 cows" in a non-ranching context.
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现 (xiàn) = to appear/present/existing
金 (jīn) = gold/money
现金 (xiàn jīn) = existing money = cash
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The meaning, however, isn't always so straightforward. Sometimes it makes me cry(
I think this sentence is just for the sake of practice. I don't think I saw a single credit card in the entire 4 months I was in China.
Most places either take cash or payment over the phone. Finding a place that takes cards is a little harder.
This made me curious about a connection with the English "canteen," so I did a quick search. Apparently, they aren't related at all, but the coincidence makes it easy to remember!
Amusing indeed but nobody in that discussion seems to care about the fact that pinyin is quite recent and that c in pinyin has nothing in common with the hard c from canteen, cantine ou cantina. Mere spelling coincidence I guess.
EVERY language course should have a slower speech version! In a real classroom, the teacher also adjusts his/her speaking speed to the students; that is normal.
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Jia (家) is a measure word like ge (个), only jia is used when referring to groups of people.
To take cash or accept cash should both be good, even the 收 accepts both words?
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Anybody else have a ton of trouble hearing the male speaker's j in 家? I swear I could only hear "zheya" until I checked the word bank.
When is it proper to use 家 rather than 个 or 里? And can I use 个 or 里 in this sentence?
