Intermediate Spoken Chinese

Basic Conversation 14-2

1. LI	Mápó Dòufu shăo fàng diănr làjiāo, wŏ pà zhèiwèi Mĕiguo péngyou shòubuliăo.
	For the Pockmarked Old Woman’s Tofu don’t put in too many hot peppers, I’m afraid my American friend wouldn’t be able to stand it.
2. WARRES	Duō fàng diănr yĕ méi guānxi, wŏ néng chī làde.
	It’s O.K. if you put in a lot, I can eat hot spicy foods.
3. WAITRESS	Hăo lei. Zhŭshí yào shémme? Mĭfàn háishi mántou?
	All right. What do you want for your main food? Rice or steamed buns?
4. LI	Sìliăng mĭfàn, liăngge mántou.
	Four ounces of rice and two steamed buns.
5. WAITRESS	Hē diănr shémme?
	What would you like to drink?
6. LI	Yŏu píjiŭ ma, nín zhèr?
	Do you have beer here?
7. WAITRESS	Yŏu.
	Yes.
8. LI	Nà jiù xiān lái yìpíng ba. Jiù zhèixiē le ba. Wŏmen yŏu jíshì, máfan nín kuài dianr shàngcài.
	Then why don’t you first bring us one bottle. That’s all, I guess. We’re in a great hurry, so please bring the food as fast as you can.
9. WAITRESS	Xíng.
	O.K.

Build Up

1. Li
fàng	put, place [V]
làjiāo	hot pepper [N]
shăo fàng diănr làjiāo	put in fewer hot peppers
pà	fear, be afraid of [V]
shòu	endure, suffer [V]
-liăo	be able to [RE]
shòubuliăo	not to be able to endure [RC]
Mápó Dòufu shăo fàng diănr làjiāo, wŏ pà zhèiwèi Mĕiguo péngyou shòubuliăo.	For the Pockmarked Old Woman’s Tofu don’t put in too many hot peppers, I’m afraid my American friend wouldn’t be able to stand it.
2. Warres
duō fàng diănr	put in more
yĕ méi guānxi	is also O.K.
là	be peppery hot [SV]
wŏ néng chī làde	I can eat hot spicy ones
Duō fàng diănr yĕ méi guānxi, wŏ néng chī làde.	It’s O.K. if you put in a lot, I can eat hot spicy foods.
3. Waitress
lei (B)	(sentence final particle) [P]
hăo lei	“all right,” “O.K.” [IE]
zhŭshí (B)	staple food, main food [N]
zhŭshí yào shémme	as staple food what do you want
mĭ	rice (uncooked) [N]
mĭfàn	rice (cooked) [N]
mántou	steamed bun [N]
mĭfàn háishi mántou	rice or steamed buns
Hăo lei. Zhŭshí yào shémme?	All right. What do you want for your
Mĭfàn háishi mántou?	main food? Rice or steamed buns?
4. Li
liăng	ounce (50 grams) [M]
sìliăng	four ounces
sìliăng mĭfàn	four ounces of cooked rice
Sìliăng mĭfàn, liăngge mántou.	Four ounces of rice and two steamed buns.
5. Waitress
hē	drink [V]
Hē diănr shémme?	What would you like to drink?
6. Li
jiŭ	liquor [N]
píjiŭ	beer [N]
Yŏu píjiŭ ma, nín zhèr?	Do you have beer here?
7. Waitress
Yŏu.	Yes.
8. Li
píng	bottle [M]
yìpíng	one bottle
xiān lái yìpíng	first bring one bottle
jiù zhèixiē le ba	only these I suppose
jíshì	urgent matter [N] (M: jiàn)
wŏmen yŏu jíshì	we have an urgent matter
shàngcài	bring food to a table [VO]
kuài dianr shàngcài	bring food to the table faster
Nà jiù xiān lái yìpíng ba. Jiù zhèixiē le ba. Wŏmen yŏu jíshì, máfan nín	Then why don’t you first bring us one bottle. That’s all, I guess. We’re in a great hurry, so
kuài dianr shàngcài.	please bring the food as fast as you can.
9. Waitress
Xíng.	O.K.

1A. The verb fàng “put, place” is very common and useful. It’s often used with the postverb -zài to create fàngzai “put in, put at, put on.” The -zài makes clear where the “putting” is supposed to end up. In rapid speech, the postverb -zài is sometimes omitted, but we recommend that for now you always use it. Examples:

1B. DUL AND SHĂO BEFORE VERBS TO INDICATE “MORE” AND “LESS.” Consider, in this line, the phrase shăo fàng diănr làjiāo “put in fewer hot peppers” or “don’t put in too many hot peppers;” and, in line 2, the phrase duō fàng diănr yĕ méi guānxi “if you put in more it’s also O.K.” or “it’s O.K. even if you put in a lot.” The stative verbs duō and shăo can be used as adverbs directly before some verbs to indicate “more” and “less.” You actually encountered this pattern previously in the phrase qĭng duō zhĭjiào “please instruct me more” in 2-4. In this pattern, yìdiăn(r) or some other quantity expression is often, though not always, added after the verb. If both yìdiăn(r) and an object are present, then the object is placed after the yìdiăn(r). The basic patterns are:

Especially in the case of actions that have already been completed, duō can sometimes imply “too much” and shăo can sometimes imply “too little.” For example:

Attention: In certain non-Mandarin dialects such as Cantonese, the sentence order with duō and shăo is the opposite of Mandarin. In those dialects, the equivalents of duō and shăo regularly come after the verb, rather than before the verb as in Mandarin. So you may sometimes hear Cantonese speakers utter sentences like *Chī duō yìdiăn when they speak Mandarin. But this isn’t good Mandarin. Standard Mandarin requires that the duō come before the verb, so you should say Duō chī yìdiăn “Eat a little more.”

1C. Distinguish pà “to fear” from kŏngpà “I’m afraid that” or “probably” (cf. 3-4). Pà means “fear” or “be afraid of” while kŏngpà indicates one’s overall estimation of a situation, a little like dàgài. Unlike pà, which is a verb, kŏngpà is a moveable adverb, so you must say Wŏ pà gŏu “I fear dogs” and you could NOT say *Wŏ kŏngpà gŏu.

1D. Look at the resultative compound verb shòubuliăo “be unable to endure.” The resultative ending -liăo means “be able to” or “have the physical ability to.” It can be used only in conjunction with the potential infixes -de- “be able to” or -bu- “not be able to” and never with a verb alone (so you could never say just *shòuliăo). Some examples of other resultative compounds with -liăo:

2A. Wŏ néng chī làde means Wŏ néng chī làde cài “I can eat hot spicy dishes.” The other flavors introduced in the Supplementary Vocabulary of this lesson can similarly be used with a -de at the end to indicate foods characterized by that flavor, for example:

2B. There is a famous saying containing the stative verb là “be peppery hot” that goes like this: Sìchuān rén bú pà là, Jiāngxī rén là bú pà, Hú’nán rén pà bú là! “People from Sichuan aren’t afraid of peppery hot flavor; people from Jiangxi, peppery hot flavor, they’re not afraid of that either; but people from Hunan are afraid that their food is not peppery hot!”

3A. The expression hăo lei, which is a variant of hăole “all right” or “O.K.,” has become quite common in Beijing in recent years.

3B. Note the concept of zhŭshí “staple food” or “main food.” Zhŭshí would be food like rice, steamed buns, noodles, or dumplings which are what really “make you full” and which are eaten along with vegetables and meat (which are sometimes called fùshí “non-staple foods”). These terms are often used in mainland China but are seldom used in Taiwan.

3C. Be sure to pronounce the tones in zhŭshí “staple food” correctly, and distinguish this word from the unrelated word zhūshĭ “pig manure”!

3D. Note the important difference between mĭ “uncooked rice” and mĭfàn “cooked rice” (fàn alone can also mean “cooked rice”). There is also a color, mĭsè, “the color of uncooked rice,” which is tan or light brown but definitely not white. Also, if you’ve finished all the rice in your rice bowl but are still hungry and want more rice, be careful not to say Wŏ hái yào fàn, because yào fàn has a secondary meaning of “to beg,” which some Chinese find very inauspicious. Instead, you should say Zài lái yìwăn fàn “Another bowl of rice” or, even more politely, Wŏ hái xiăng zài tiān yìwăn fàn, which means “I’d like to add one more bowl of rice.”

4A. Liăng is a measure meaning “Chinese ounce.” To avoid pronouncing liăng twice, which would be considered as not pleasant sounding, Chinese speakers usually say èrliăng for “two ounces” instead of the expected *liăngliăng.

4B. In dining halls in mainland China, rice and other staple foods such as jiăozi “dumplings” are usually sold by weight. In Taiwan, rice is sold by the bowl while dumplings are sold by the piece or per ten.

6A. Jiŭ refers to any kind of alcoholic beverage from light beer to hard liquor. English “drink alcoholic beverages” is hē jiŭ in Chinese. A recent Chinese government-sponsored campaign to promote safe driving had as its slogan: Hē jiŭ bù kāichē, kāichē bù hē jiŭ “If/when you drink don’t drive, and if/when you drive don’t drink” (note the implied “if” or “when”).

6B. The pí- of píjiŭ “beer” is a phonetic borrowing from Western languages (cf. English “beer,” French “bière,” German “Bier”). Like other languages, Chinese has loanwords (cf. 13-2: 2A). Normally, Chinese speakers prefer loan translations like huŏchē “train” (lit. “fire vehicle”), where the meaning of the foreign original, rather than the sound, is transferred. The number of purely phonetic borrowings, such as léidá “radar,” has in the past not been very great. There are also partial phonetic borrowings such as píjiŭ, where one syllable renders the sound of a foreign word and another syllable (jiŭ) indicates the general meaning.

6C. AFTERTHOUGHTS. Examine the question Yŏu píjiŭ ma, nín zhèr? “(Do you) have beer, you here?” In this line, the phrase nín zhèr “you here” would normally come first in the sentence, as in Nín zhèr yŏu píjiŭ ma? “Do you here have beer?” However, the first words that came to the speaker’s mind when he was about to say this sentence were the verb and object (yŏu píjiŭ), and only later—as an afterthought—did he add the subject (nín zhèr). Some more examples of afterthoughts:

The use of afterthoughts occurs wherever Chinese is spoken, but is especially common in Beijing. There is no need for you, as a nonnative speaker of Chinese, to make a special effort to use afterthoughts in your speech, but if it occasionally happens “naturally,” that would be just fine.

8A. The le in jiù zhèixiē le ba “only these I suppose” is optional. When used, as here, it implies that originally the speaker had considered ordering additional items but then changed his mind and decided to order only these items; in other words, a changed situation has occurred in the speaker’s mind.

8B. Why does the same speaker use wŏmen in this line but zámmen in line 1 of 14-1 (the first half of this conversation)? In line 1 of 14-1, the Chinese student is speaking directly to his American friend, while here in line 8 of 14-2, he’s speaking to the waitress about himself and his American friend. He uses exclusive wŏmen because he wishes to make clear that he’s excluding the waitress, i.e., the ones who are in a hurry are wŏmen “we” (“my American friend and I”) and not zámmen “we” (“you and I”).

SV1–4. The so-called “five flavors of Chinese cooking” are suān “be sour,” tián “be sweet,” kŭ “be bitter,” là “be peppery hot” (which appeared in line 2 of the Basic Conversation), and xián “be salty.” A basic categorization of flavors in China is into tiánde and xiánde. Often xiánde just means “those foods that aren’t sweet.”

SV3. The stative verb kŭ “to be bitter” can be used figuratively as well as literally. The verb-object compound chīkŭ means “eat bitterness,” i.e., “have a difficult time.” There is also a famous saying in Classical Chinese: Chī dé kŭ zhōng kŭ, fāng wéi rén shàng rén “Only when one has eaten the bitterest of the bitter will one be a human being above all others.”

1. suān	be sour [SV]
2. tián	be sweet [SV]
3. kŭ	be bitter [SV]
4. xián	be salty [SV]
5. píngzi	bottle [N]
6. măn	reach a certain age or time limit [V]
nián măn èrshiyīsuì	years to reach 21 years of age
hē jiŭ	drink alcoholic beverages
Zài Mĕiguo, nián măn èrshiyīsuì cái kéyi hē jiŭ.	In the U.S., only when you’ve reached the age of 21 can you drink alcohol.

Zhèige fàngzai zhèr, nèige fàngzai nàr.		“Put this here and put that there.”
Qĭng nĭ bă shūbāo fàngzai yĭzi dĭxia.		“Please put your book bags under your chairs.”
Nèixiē dōngxi nĭ fàngzai năr le?		“Where did you put those things?”

DUŌ	VERB	YÌDIĂNR	OBJECT
duō	kàn	yìdiănr	shū
“study more”

Shăo chī diănr.	“Eat a little less.” or “Don’t eat so much.”
Duō chuān diănr yīfu!	“Wear some more clothes!”
Duō xiĕ jĭge zì.	“Write a few more characters.”
Duō zhù jĭtiān.	“Stay a few more days.”
Duō zuòshì, shăo shuōhuà.	“Do more, talk less.”

Nèige zì, nĭ duō xiĕle yìbĭ.	“You wrote one stroke too many for that character.”
Hăoxiàng nĭ shăo gĕile shíkuài qián.	“It seems you paid ten dollars too little.”

SHĂO	VERB	YÌDIĂNR	OBJECT
shăo	fàng	yìdiănr làji	āo
“put in fewer hot peppers”

POSITIVE	NEGATIVE
zuòdeliăo	zuòbuliăo
“be able to do”	“be unable to do”
chīdeliăo	chībuliăo
“be able to eat”	“be unable to eat”
hēdeliăo	hēbuliăo
“be able to drink”	“be unable to drink”

Nĭ kāideliăo chē ma?	“Are you able to drive?” (e.g., when asked of people who may have had too much alcohol)
Jīntiān wŏ zŏubuliăo nèmme yuănde lù.	“Today I can’t walk that far.”
Nèiwèi lăo tàitai hăobuliăole.	“That old lady isn’t going to get better.”

Nĭ zĕmme zhèmme ài chī suānde?	“How come you like eating sour foods so much?”
Guăngdōng rén xĭhuan chī tiánde.	“The Cantonese people like to eat sweet things.”
Wŏ néng chī kŭde.	“I can eat bitter foods.”
Wŏ bù néng chī xiánde.	“I can’t eat salty foods.”

Màn zŏu, nín.	“Take your time, you.” OR “You take your time.”
Zĕmme la, nĭ?	“What happened to you?”
Zhēn guì a, zhèrde dōngxi.	“The things here are really expensive.”
Duō piàoliang a, nèibianrde shān!	“How beautiful the hills over there are!”