Americans are fond of referring to their country as "the greatest nation on earth". Until recently, I didn't believe any country deserved that description. But today I think there is a strong contender for the title.

China is the world's oldest living civilisation. It has recovered from over a century of colonial oppression and lifted its citizens out of poverty. As its growth continues, China is poised to become the world's largest economy and a technology leader that is second to none. By 2030, I believe it will be an indisputable fact that China is the greatest nation on earth.

I need to understand China, from a Chinese perspective. This is my journey.

Saturday 7 August 2021

Active And Passive Voice In Mandarin - Some Initial Thoughts

I understand from my online research that the passive voice isn't very common in Chinese, and when it is used, there are definite constructs available to express it.

This post is to talk about a couple of examples I've come across where the same verb seems to be used in both the active and passive senses.

One of these examples is a word we've seen before, 叫 jiào ("to call"), which seems to be used in exactly the same form, in both the active and passive senses.

1. 请 在 这里 等。我 他. qǐng zài zhèlǐ děng. Wǒ jiào tā. ("Please wait here. I('ll) call him.")

2. 我张明 wǒ jiào zhāng míng. ("I'm called Zhang Ming")

The verb is exactly the same (叫 jiào), but in the first sentence, the active voice is implied ("to call"), while in the second, the passive voice is implied ("to be called").

Another example is the word 可爱 kě ài, which means "cute".

If we break the word apart into its constituent characters, we see that 可 kě means "can" and 爱 ài means "love".

But if 可爱 kě ài means "cute", the literal meaning is probably "lovable" or "can be loved", not "can love".

So once again, a verb is used in an implied passive sense without any indication that the voice is passive.

I'm a bit confused, so I'm parking this in my "to revisit later" basket.

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