- Forum >
- Topic: Chinese >
- "为什么你看起来非常生气？"
"为什么你看起来非常生气？"
Translation:Why do you look extremely angry?
27 Comments
To be clearer, if you replace extremely with "so", it would be 为什么你看起来那么生气? But both are alright for speaking.
No, some verbs are never or almost never used in continuous form in English. Some of those are see (meaning understand), feel (meaning have an opinion), look (meaning seem), believe, love, hate, doubt, suppose, prefer, know, like etc.
'Look', as in 'seem/appear' can be and is broadly used in present continuous forms, while the meaning is fairly similar to the version in present simple. 'Why are you looking so angry?' is a perfectly correct way to say it. You're right with the other verbs.
I don't honestly know if it is grammatically correct, but I can tell you that no English native-speaker ever says it that way. Food for thought
We would say, "Why do you look so angry?" We might say, "They look extremely angry," but not when asked of an angry person.
Can somebody tell me why there is a 起来 used in the sentence? As far as I know that is added to a verb to indicate "beginning"...
I'm bilingual Chinese/English from my background, with no formal academic training in Chinese so take this with a grain of salt: as far as I can tell, it kind of forms a complex with 看 - strung together, 看起来 has the effect of making 看 reflexive, referring to the appearance of the person, instead of referring to the action of the person.
When using 看 and 起来 together, it expresses the meaning of inference about a state of someone or something, for instance, 这杯水看起来很烫= this glass of water seems very hot.
The literal meaning of 起来 is stand up(after someone falls), in colloquialism it can also mean get up.
why is there no "de" between feichang and shengqi. With other sentences making adjectives to an adverbial phrase there needs to be a de. (adj de verb)
It's a complex topic, and what you should use usually varies dramatically under different circumstances.
First thing first, there are three conjunctions in modern mandarin which have the same pronounciation(de):的,地,得. Their specific usages are respectively verb+得+adverbial: e.g. 你做得漂亮= you have done it beautifully. adverbial+地+verb: e.g. 请慢慢地走= please walk slowly. any other situation you COULD use 的: e.g. 你的书=your book 非常的好=very good but you could subsitute '得' or '地' with '的' in writing which was not seen as a grammar error and people can understand what you mean perfectly.
Under some circumstances, you could omit 'de' e.g. 非常(的)好=very good adverbial+(的)+adjective 请慢慢(地)走=please walk slowy adverbial+(地)+verb
Under some circumstances, you can't omit 'de',if you don't use a 'de' in these sentences, either the meaning would change or the grammar would be totally incorrect e.g. 你的书=your book attribute+的+noun if you omit 'de', then '你书' wouldn't mean anything in chinese
<pre>你做得漂亮=you have done it beautifully verb+得+adverbial
</pre>
in this case, '你做得' equals 'what you have done', you can also translate '你做得漂亮' to 'what you have done is beautiful', if you omit 'de', then this sentence(你做漂亮) would be grammarly incorrect, and here is the tricky thing, in colloquial language, many chinese would omit '你'(subject) under certain contexts(e.g. your supervisor praises you when you have done your work beautifully '做得漂亮'='你做得漂亮'), but if you also omit 'de', then the meaning of the sentence(做漂亮) would be changed to 'please do it beautifully'(people would use this sentence e.g. when your supervisor ask you to do something important).
In short, if you're not familiar with colloquial chinese, then don't omit 'de' under any circumstance, you would be fine.
Something else I wanna share just came up . '很生气' '极生气' '非常(的)生气' '出离(的)愤怒' all mean 'extremely angry'
There are some subtle differences among these expressions. You can't add 'de' to these phrases: '很生气' '极生气', e.g. '很的生气' is grammarly incorrect.
But the expressions such as 非常的生气 are fine, and you could omit 'de' in these phrases.
It seems that the pattern is if the adverbial consists of two words(e.g. 非常or出离), then you could omit 'de' in the phrase, but if the adverbial consists of only one word(e.g. 很or极), then you can't add 'de' to the phrase.
Tbh, as a native chinese speaker, I'm not 100% confident this rule applies to every situation of the grammar pattern of 'adverbial+adjective' precisely.
Why does 为什么 come before 你 here while it went after 他们 in that other sentence?
I'd also love to find an explanation of the rules for how to position 为什么 in sentences
No, but it's more common statement in English. Nobody would say, "Why do you look extremely angry?" in a natural english sentence. "so" works smoothly.
The 非常 Word Bank tile was momentarily silent before the sound came on. Could this be a near-failure of the defective network code which causes the persistently-silent Word Bank tile audio bug? The unspeakable audio tile bug is the sole reason I was forced to abandon duolingo. By the time it's fixed (if ever) I'll be fluent anyway.
586
非 = not
常 = common
非常 (fēi cháng) = extraordinary
生 (shēng) = to be born/to give birth/life/to grow/raw/student
气 (qì) = gas/air/smell/weather/to make angry
生气 (shēngqì) = to get angry/angry
This will sound dumb. Am i supposed to translate the sentence or say the Chinese because it tells me both ways are wrong
If you have a speaking exercise, you are supposed to say the Chinese. If the characters turn red and it says you are wrong, it could be that there is too much background noise, your microphone is covered or off, you are not speaking loudly or clearly enough, or perhaps your Chinese pronunciation is not right.
