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- "I'm buying six altogether."
"I'm buying six altogether."
Translation:我一共买六个。
26 Comments
Is the word order "一共我买六个" not valid? It was marked wrong. I thought in general, that it's okay to move one piece of sentence to the first position (as the topic). Is there some reason you can't do that here?
It's not incorrect, but that would seem like you are hesitating to think about how many you are going to buy, so it sounds to me like:
"一共...我买六个"
Why isn't "我一共在买六个" accepted? This say "buying" -- an action I'm in the process of doing. So shouldn't it be 在买?
Although you might be right in some contexts, I think perhaps you’re adding specificity that the original sentence doesn’t require. Chinese prefers simpler to more complex. So perhaps it’s a good exercise in reducing and focusing only on the essence of the sentence. Complete but concise. This is just a thought, not a definitive answer. You’d need a native speaker for that.
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I think that would only work if you were actively in the process of making the purchase when you said it. Like, you're at the cash register getting the things scanned and you turn to someone and say "I'm buying six altogether".
As a Chinese student myself, I have made that same mistake multiple times. You cannot use 在买. You use 在 when you are talking about a place or where something is or put.
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I lived in China for 6 years. They commonly put yi gong both at the very beginning and at the end of the sentence. At the end, it finalizes the statement.
In my mind there is no difference between 我一共买六个 and 我买六个一共. Both answers should be accepted.
Sorry to have to tell you this but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Mandarin speaker use the latter.
As a Chinese student, there is a specific order to which a sentence in Chinese is put. Subject + Time + Verb + Object is one way to put it, I suggest you check out this website. https://www.fluentu.com/blog/chinese/2013/10/30/chinese-sentence-structure/
"I'm buying a total of 6" or "I'm buying 6 in total" should be accepted too. Other inflections of the verb like "bought" or "will buy" should be accepted too.
You use 在 (before the verb) to indicate a continuous action. Buying as opposed to buy or bought or will buy. 在买 = In the process of buying.
Technically it could be in the past or the future too but you are in the middle of doing it. e.g. 我昨天在买东西的时候。。。= when I was buying things yesterday...
So it’s best not to think of it as a tense. Think of 在 as indicating continuous action and 了 as indicating completed action.
Whoops! Just saw what the exercise is that you’re asking about.
No, it’s entirely unnecessary to use 在 in this sentence.
But I suppose you could, depending on what you’re talking about.
