"你知道长江在哪儿吗？"
Translation:Do you know where the Yangtze is?
13 Comments
I am Chinese, let me try to explain it.
江 is equivalent to river. But you may ask what's the different between 河 and 江 as both are translated to "river". To answer it, we need to know Yellow River (黃河) as well.
Yangtze (長江) and Yellow River (黃河) are the largest river and second largest rivers in China. Yangtze (長江) is at south and Yellow River (黃河) at north. Therefore, rivers at south are named as xx江, yy江... etc. And rivers at north are named zz河... etc. Although there are some exceptions, the naming of rivers is mainly come from these two rivers.
For your sentence "Do you know where the Yangtze River is?", just like asking "Where is the White House?". We won't say "Where is the White House Building?". It give me the same feeling where I read "Yangtze River".
Yes, but "Yangtze River" is how we would say it in English, so it should be accepted.
Thank you for the explanation. As a native English speaker and just starting to learn Chinese, I/we do not know these valuable items of information. The feedback from the native Chinese speakers, helps us a lot.
Right, but in Spanish you wouldn't say "sur del rio Rio Grande". Kind of like the play on words in Kung Fu Panda, with Master Shifu ☺
That's all fine but in English we do in fact say both "The Yangtze" and "The Yangtze River". With some rivers we usually leave off "river" and with some we usually add it, and with some both are common. And with some we even do it another way like "The River Nile".
Thank you for that explanation! I've been wondering about the difference between the two for some time.
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Thank you a lot for that King184867! As Richard said, many of us here are new to the Chinese language. However, I would dare say that most of came here out of sheer curiosity about it's amazing culture and ancient language. So, little bits and pieces of information like that are exactly what we need. Kindly, keep them coming and thanks again. :)
The trouble is the English translation. We often add redundant parts on the end, so we would usually say "the Yangtze River". Similar to PIN number, or in my country we have the Avon River (literally the river river), and Lake Rotorua (lake two lakes).
I was confused because a comment on another question says "In Chinese 江 is supposed to be a large river whereas 河 is a river or a watercourse..."
Here's a stack exchange question that gives more nuance: https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/9548/whats-the-difference-between-江-and-河
