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- "客人在客厅喝茶。"
"客人在客厅喝茶。"
Translation:The guest drinks tea in the living room.
26 Comments
"The guests are drinking tea in the living room." Your version changes the emphasis.
While it changes the emphasis in English, it seems to me that the Chinese would be the same, though I'd be happy to be corrected.
I think there is nothing wrong with it. Who says Guests drink tea in the living room?
32
"The guest is in the the living room drinking tea" Still marked wrong as of 2019-07-04. Reported.
Very unnatural English...again, distracting from the mission of learning Chinese...
Again. I notice a lot of repetition in this lesson. Seems to be a characteristic of the later lessons.
- 660
If 客人在客厅喝茶 = "The guest drinks tea in the living room", then how would you say "The guest in the living room drinks tea" in Chinese?
In the first case, it answers where the guest does the action of drinking tea. The second case just points out that specifically the guest located in the living room (not any other guests elsewhere) drinks tea in general (as opposed to coffee or anything else).
The guest in the living room drinks tea. = 客厅里的客人喝茶。
Hope this helps answer your question!
- 1919
"Guests have tea in the living room" How do I know when I should have a definite article "the" or not?
It is not lounge room. Just lounge. If you accept that in one sentence, accept it here too. Grumble.
The guest is having tea in the living room. Thid sgiukd be correct too right?
- 211
If English can make a grammatical distinction between "The guest drinks tea in the living room" and the "The guest is drinking tea in the living room" then so should Chinese. My understanding is that the verb by itself is the present habitual 'drinks', and needs something like ‘在' to make it progressive. Am I wrong with this?
Yes and no. You're studying German, so you know that "the guest drinks" and "the guest is drinking" are both "der Gast trinkt", and there's no present progressive tense. It's the same in French, though there are different constructions that can make it clear that the aspect is progressive, if necessary.
Likewise in Chinese, the bare verb may or may not refer to a continuing action, depending on the context. Also, there's already a "在" in this sentence, and to me it would be weird to add another, but I have to defer to native Chinese speakers on this.
I think you could use "喝着茶" ("hēzhechá") to express "drinking tea", but I'd like to hear from a native speaker as to whether this would be necessary or natural-sounding.
The present imperfect tense would make a better translation, i.e. "The guest is drinking tea in the living room." It suggests that the guest is currently drinking tea in the living room.
"The guest drinks tea in the living room" sounds awkward in English because one would only say that to indicate that the guest prefers to drink tea in the living room instead of some other room.
It's not awkward if you think of it as a response to "Where does the guest drink tea?"
Saying "the guest is in the living room drinking tea" is wrong???? Where on Earth have you learned your English????
I think "The guest drinks tea in the living room" is wrong. Chinese defaults to singular context. 一个客人喝茶在客厅里。that would seem correct.
Have to disagree. I am ethnic Chinese and a single guest is also referred to as "客人".
- 2231
I think that would be more likely rendered as "There is a guest / There are guests..." i.e. an existential construction. But the sentence 客人在客厅喝茶 looks to be better rendered as "The guest / The guests..."
