"有没有风险的投资吗？"
Translation:Is there a risk free investment?
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Wow this one is confusing. I thought the '有没有' in the sentence was used to indicate 'Is there or is there not' instead of having '没有‘ modifying the word '风险‘ to mean risk-free.
Would 'Is there a risky investment?' also be an acceptable translation? If not, why?
Is it the 吗 at the end of the sentence that indicates that 没有 modifies 风险 in this sentence?
I think you're right, but surely this would be a confusing sentence, even to Chinese ears, before you reach the last word.
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A Chinese speaker would give a slight pause after the first 有 to indicate that it does not belong with 沒有, but with the 嗎 that will be coming at the end.
I think I would personally say "有无风险的投资吗？" instead, just to avoid that confusion.
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besides the last 吗, if we want to mean 有没有 in this sentence, normally we will not use 的 between 风险 and 投资 i don't know why.
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If you want the sentence to be less confusing you could insert a pause before 没有 when speaking, I think.
As you said, 没有 goes with 风险. 没有风险="does not have risk".
有=There is/There are (something exists)
没有风险=does not have risk
的=(what comes before is describing the next word)
投资=investment(s)
吗？=(The statement becomes a yes/no question.)
So, this sentence is asking if risk-free investments exist, not if risky investments exist.
Not a lot to add, except that it seemed to me too, to read, "Do you have a risky investment". Audio doesn't play a part in translating written Chinese to written English. Looks like one of those things one just has to remember.
Wouldn't 无 in place of 没有 be less confusing and get the same meaning across just as well?
无 is more formal than 没有。If you see「无风险的投资」then you're probally seeing it on a contract, and you're probally being scammed.
My thoughts exactly. Sure无 appears more frequently in formal text, but that's not to say that I haven't heard it used in conversation.
I am a fluent Chinese speaker and can confirm this is not grammatically natural without a pause after the first 有。
maybe it would be better to change the tiles, since this sentense does not use 有没有 but 有 + 没有风险的
Which character conveys the "free" aspect of "risk free"? I would have expected this sentence to mean"Is there a risk to the investment?"
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有投资吗？= Is there an investment? 有风险的投资= a risky investment 没有风险的投资= a risk-free investment (I think)
The first word 有 and the following 没有 have nothing to do with each other. 没有风险="does not have risk". See my comment above to PipuPupi for more details.
I would translate your question "Is there a risk to the investment?" as 这个投资有没有风险? or 这个投资有风险吗? In the translations of your sentence, notice that 投资 is the subject of the sentence, and you do not see 有没有 ocurring in the same sentence as 吗. 有没有 and 吗 both ask yes/no questions, but they don't work together. If you see a sentence (like this exercise) that has 有没有 and 吗, then the 有没有 is not really "有没有” but rather "有" (space) "没有".
Can any native speaker comment on whether "有免风险的投资吗" would be a valid alternative? If so, maybe the Duolingo staff could make the change? (Copied Winston's suggestion, since it's being dragged down by its parent comment.)
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Native here. As others ponined out: 无 is better than 免。无 is closest in meaning as 没有。免 on the other hand, means a little different is used in a slightly different scenario. 无 means no in a "never existed" way. 免 also means no but in a "existed or could have existed, but is preventable, prevented or exampted". For example: 无罪 means not guilty, while 免罪 means crime exempted. 无风险 means no risk to begin with, while 免风险 could be something like, there could be huge risk but because you have "good connections", you are gonna end up being able to get away with it.
Also native here. Another thing to note here that 免 can be used as a verb depending on the context, and 无 is used exclusively as an adjective.
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No. However, Adam's suggestion 无 is valid. 免 isn't used this way (I don't really know how to explain how its used, sorry)
I think 免 means getting rid of or avoiding something actively. 无 or 低 seems to work better to mean risk free or low risk.
这个句子太麻烦了! I admit, I also fell into this trap, not noticing that question particle at the end. It is a really good lesson: pay attention to the details. By the way, I tried it in Google translate: it also got it wrong! So, it is not ambiguous, just tricky. But if you make a statement out of this question, that's when ambiguity comes to the scene: 有没有风险的投资 would mean "there's a risk-free investment", but can it be also a question? Like, "Is there a risky investment?" I wonder, what would our respected native experts say. Alas, no dictionary I checked provides translation for "risk-free". "Risky"? Easy: 有风险. "Risk-free"? Sorry, no such thing. :D
Google Translate is not an authority on anything, it is effectively using statistical methods to guess what is the most likely translation, and at no point does it consider the “meaning” of the sentence. As a result, it is super bad on language pairs like English and Mandarin where the sentence structures are quite different and there is not a long history of mutual borrowing.
This is confusing, I mistook it as 'Is there a risky investment?'. Would '没有风险的投资有吗？' be a correct sentence? I do think it sounds a bit strange but at least the '有没有' is seperated.
I mistook it, too. ;o)
Your question 没有风险的投资有吗？is grammatically correct but would have a slightly different emphasis: "Isn't there a risky investment?"
For "Is there a risky investment?" you could say:
有没有(有)风险的投资？(without the 吗)
or 有(有)风险的投资吗？
For "Is there a risk free investment?" it would be:
有没有风险的投资吗？or
有无风险的投资吗？or
有没有没有风险的投资？:o)
It is quite logical, almost mathematical:
"Is there …… ?" is either 有 …… 吗？(with 吗, and that is the case here)
or 有没有 …… ？ (without the 吗, which is not the case here).
So, on the outside, we have 有 …… 吗？= "Is there …… ?"
and on the inside we have 没有风险的投资 = risk free investment (literally: an investement that does not have risks).
And together:
有 [ 没有风险的投资 ] 吗？ = "Is there [a risk free investment]?"
And when even mother tongue speakers say that she could have made a longer pause after the first 有, that means we all are not so bad. ;o)
Same confusion here, it definitely sounds like a 有没有 type of sentence where 吗 is obsolete, they could have used 无 instead of 没有 there and none of this would be an issue.
Is this a philosophical question, or is the answer simply “no”? Even aside from the misleading 有没有 collocation, it's a very confusing and hard to interpret sentence.
On reflection, I think the problem with this example is a confluence of three separate issues: first, it introduces a construction that looks like one we are familiar with, but with a completely different structure; second, it is recorded with the wrong intonation (specifically, with the intonation proper to the other, more familiar parse); and third, that it has facetious content—given that under the correct interpretation it is something that only makes sense if the speaker is stoned (or a philosopher, same thing)—and so fails to alert us to pay close attention.
So I'd suggest (a) adding another example before this one where something appears between 有 and 没有, and (b) changing this to something semantically more reasonable, like “is there a route with no connection” or “is there a duty free store” or “is there a way of changing money with no fee” (any of which would fit in the nearby travel topic).
It seems rhis is asking, "Does this investment have risk?" not, "Is there a risk-free investment?"
Weird. Google translate says that this is asking if you have a risky investment. The exact opposite. I'd better not get a Chinese broker then
At first, I thought so, too. Apparently there is no error here, although surely 有免风险的投资吗？would be less confusing.
The 有没有 isn't what you think it is. It uses the 有。。。吗 structure and is asking if a 没有风险的投资 exists
U1qX, you made my day. A lovely and correct sentence. Have some lingots. Thanks for the smile! :o)
This sentence is way too ambiguous. It could also be translated as "Is there a risky investment?"/"are there risky investments?"
No, it can't. That's what it would say if there were no 吗 at the end. The fact that there is a 吗 is the clue that 有没有 is not for a yes/no question, but something else.