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- "Doctor Wang is not Chinese."
"Doctor Wang is not Chinese."
Translation:王医生不是中国人。
18 Comments
So the title always comes after the name in Chinese? I wrote 医生王不是中国人 and it was incorrect.
Yeah, it's similar to how Japanese honorifics work. FYI, the word doctor (in the sense of having a pHd) is 博士 in Chinese (I'm a native speaker).
谢谢! I assumed 医生 was medical doctor. Is it the same for describing a person of any profession, or only certain titles? I don't know any Japanese.
No.
Generally, the profession or title must have no more than two characters and is usually honorable in the traditional view. But actually the rule is not very clear.
traditionally honorable jobs
王老师(teacher): good
王教授(professor): good
王医生(doctor): good
王经理(manager): good
political titles
王总统(president): good
王主席(chairman): good
王总理(premier): good
王首相(prime minister): Never seen, but it does work on foreign prime ministers.
王国王(king) / 皇帝(emperor): Not for monarchs in East Asia. Sometimes okay for monarchs of other countries.
common jobs
王司机(driver): okay, but not for addressing people
王警察(police): same as above
王学生(student): okay, but almost never used
王工人(worker): weird
王农民(farmer): weird
王师傅(master): for addressing workers traditionally regarded as "craftsmen", which includes most physical laborers in modern world like drivers, plumbers, etc. except farmers. Here "master" means guild master in old times.
common titles
王先生(Mr.) good
王小姐(Miss.) good
王夫人(Mrs.) good
Most professions don't have titles you can refer them to eg you can't say 工程师李 or 李工程师 if Li is an engineer.
81
Just to let not stand the sentence by evanpipta ("I assumed 医生 was medical doctor") there uncommented:
医生 IS in fact the medical doctor.
博士 is the PhD.
And in both cases, the titel comes after the name, just as Cinnamon elaborated in detail.
If you typed that manually, then the answer is marked wrong since the developers missed typed alternatives/translations.
So your answer is correct!
- 1024
No that's not correct. Don't say 医生王. Usually this pattern is used for nicknames, often a bit prejorative. e.g. 跛子李 / The lamed Li.
(Someone else has given you a down vote already.)
I downvoted him because as a native speaker, we don't talk like that.
I downvoted because this is a place of learning, not misinformation. (If you don't know, that's fine, but don't pretend you do. It just confuses other people and slows your own learning.)
- 1024
Hm... nobody never fails and I think it's sufficient that it's clarified.
Personally I like NaruSamaruk0. He does know Chinese well.
