"What is this movie about?"
Translation:这个电影是关于什么的？
19 Comments
560
Mainly 2 ways:
1) As a pronoun of sth./sb. understood or implied.
这只狗是卖帽子的。
This is a dog that sells hats.
2) As a modal particle to conclude a statement.
海龟是不吃香蕉的。
Turtles do not eat banana.
They should be more consistent about it, then. They miss this in their translation of "What is this business meeting mainly about?"
X 是关于什么 is also a correctly formed sentence, though the underlying grammar structure is different. That said, X 是关于什么的 is the more common form.
- 560
IMHO I cannot agree that's grammatically correct. Of course if someone says it without 的 I won't be mad. In order to speak natural sounding Chinese such tiny bits are somehow important.
Whenever we say A 是 B, both sides of 是 should be a noun, a clause or an equivalent. We cannot use a noun determinant.
e.g.
这支笔是红 is wrong
we can only say
这支笔是红的
"this pen is a red one"
for saying "This pen is red".
Compare these correct sentences:
这是一部很闷的电影
这部电影很闷
这部电影是很闷的
这是一部关于中国的电影
这部电影关于中国
这部电影是关于中国的
You are correct that my statement was inaccurate. As is suggested in your examples, the 是…的 is probably in fact an A 是 B sentence structure with the B noun phrase elided. You will sometimes see 是 omitted in such sentences, but not 的. I probably should not have posted so late at night! Thanks for correcting my error!
- 35
It is necessary in the sense that it makes the question less formal (since movies are casual, unlike, say, meetings).
- 35
People use it as in the example for casual, informal situations, so it's appropriate for outings with friends, but less so for meetings and work events.
- 560
Yes, except that i don't ike 个 for a movie.
If everything is counted by 个, we don't need to have classifier in Chinese.
