"别做梦了！"
Translation:Stop dreaming!
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Your comment made me notice the ambiguity of this sentence. It probably means dreaming as in (... while sleeping), can anyone confirm that?
Checked a bunch of dictionaries, only partially clarified the issue. They all gave 'to dream' as the first sense of 做梦, which, Dear Dictionary Editors, is still ambiguous between 'hallucination while you're asleep' and 'aspiration when you're awake'. Lot of help you guys were.
As a second sense one offered 'have a pipe dream', so we can definitely use 做梦 as a negative description of things you aspire to. Other dictionaries had 'daydream', 'illusion', 'fantasy', which ... wait for it ... are ambiguous between a neutral attitude and a negative one.
I checked several other uses of 梦 and never found one that was unambiguously both 1) about what you aspire to, and 2) approving. 梦想 is a word, and I imagine it's used precisely to exclude the 'while asleep' interpretation, but that still doesn't say whether it's regarded as a good thing. 梦寐以求 means to long for something ceaselessly, which isn't exactly praise either.
68
人因梦想而伟大, literally, a man is great because of his dreams/aspiration, so 梦想 has a positive connotation.
- 1357
I suspect this is not about a sleeping dream; the context would be rather strange. Dream is used in the waking sense in Chinese also, e.g. 中国梦, Xi Dada's 'China dream'.
- 68
That's one way of looking at it. Also note that "Don't dream", as a prohibition, is more 不许做梦, not that there is any situation I can think of to reasonably use this.
The use of the 了 in 别..........了 makes it about stopping something that you are already doing. So just 别......... without the 了would be sufficient to mean don't do something.
We would say "别放弃梦想", which literally means "Don't/Never give up dreaming". "梦想" and “梦” can both carry the meaning of "things someone desire/expect", while the latter more represent the activity of physically dreaming. Which one to use exactly depends more on the habit and less on the syntax.
- 68
That is more of "Don't give up on your dreams", the "never" can be better convey with 永远, e.g. ”（要）永不放弃梦想“ or a better alternative.
Why is 了 needed here. Even a hypothetical future state change in a command needs 了?
Yes, the 了 makes the difference between "Don't dream" and "Stop dreaming".
- 1367
My thinking is: the person is dreaming already, so giving it up requires changing of state/result, hence the 了.
