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.

Wednesday 6 October 2021

The Mandarin Equivalent Of There, Their And They're

So to add to the confusion of homophones in Mandarin, one of the most common sounds has three different characters with different meanings.

The best explanation I could find on the net was from the TutorMing site.

I'm going to repeat the salient points here, but with some changes in terminology that I hope will make things a bit easier to understand.

There are three characters that are pronounced "de" (no tone, but with one exception I will come to later). They are , and .

Broadly speaking,

A. de qualifies nouns

B. de qualifies verbs

C. de qualifies adjectives

There may be more than one way to qualify a noun, a verb, or an adjective, so let's look at that next.

A1. de as a possessive qualifier for nouns (See my previous post on this):

书 wǒ de shū ("my book")

A2. de as an attributive qualifier for nouns:

a. 红色 书 hóngsè de shū ("red book", literally "red colour-ed book")

b. 英文 说 人 yīngwén shuō de rén ("English-speaking people", literally "English speak-ing people")

B1. de as an adverbial qualifier for verbs:

a. 他 说 中文 很好 tā shuō zhōngwén de hěn hǎo ("He speaks Chinese (de) very well")

This adverbial qualifier can also be attached to comparisons:

b. 冬天 里 北京 比 上海 冷 多 dōngtiān lǐ běijīng bǐ shànghǎi lěng de duō ("In winter, Beijing is much colder than Shanghai", literally "In winter, Beijing compared to Shanghai cold (de) much").

B2. déi as a "must" qualifier for verbs:

我们 买 票 wǒmen déi mǎi piào ("We must buy tickets"). Here, is actually pronounced déi, not de

C. de as an adverbial qualifier for adjectives:

她 高兴 笑 了 tā gāoxìng de xiào le ("She smiled happily", literally, "She happy (de) smiled")

As an exercise for myself, I thought up three ways to say the same thing, using each of the three "de"s:

1. 我 能 说 流利 中文 wǒ néng shuō liúlì de zhōngwén ("I can speak fluent Chinese")

2. 我 能 说 中文 流利 wǒ néng shuō zhōngwén liúlì ("I can speak Chinese fluently")

3. 我 能 流利 说 中文 wǒ néng liúlì de shuō zhōngwén ("I can speak Chinese fluently")

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