UNIT6 Learning Chinese 中文入门.pdfVIP

Unit 6 Tiān bú pà, dì bú pà, zhǐ pà [wàiguó rén, etc.] shuō Zhōngguó huà! Nothing to fear from heaven, nothing to fear from earth – the only thing to fear is [‘foreigners’, etc.] speaking Chinese! (Self-depreciatory phrase, taught to the author by one of his Chinese teachers.) Contents 6.1 Opposites 6.2 Describing people Exercise 1 6.3 Verb+guo Exercise 2 6.4 When, before, after 6.5 When? Exercise 3, 4 6.6 Places of work Exercise 5 6.7 Directions Exercise 6 6.8 The shi-de construction Exercises 7, 8 6.9 Dialogue: Where are you from? Exercise 9 6.10 Calling Michael Jordan Exercise 10 6.11 Food (3) 6.12 Highlights Exercise 11 6.13 Rhymes and rhythms Appendix 1: Chinese historical periods 6.1 Opposites With SVs, opposites can be formed by negation: duì bú duì. However, in many cases, there exists a word that can stand in for the negative phrase as a true opposite: duì ‘right’ cuò ‘wrong’. Occasionally, if they share a domain but are regarded as contrary, pairs of nouns can also be treated as opposites: xuésheng and lǎoshī; nánde and nǚde; gǒu ‘dog’ and māo ‘cat’. Exploration of opposites can reveal subtle cultural and linguistic differences. Chinese, for example, consider the opposite of xīn ‘new’ to be either lǎo ‘old’ [in the sense 1 Learning Chinese: A Foundation Course in Mandarin Julian K. Wheatley, MIT of former or antiquated] or jiù ‘old’ [in the sense of used or dilapidated]. But lǎo, in the context of foods such as toufu, can also mean ‘tough’, opposite to nèn ‘soft’ [like baby’s skin]: Ròu tài lǎo le. The meat’s tough! Zhè dòufu hěn nèn. This tofu’s quite soft. Shēng (chūshēng de shēng, xuésheng de shēng) can mean ‘raw; unripe’ (as well as ‘to bear; be born’) and as such, is opposed to shóu ‘ripe; cooked’. Shóu has a range of meanings, from ‘ripe’ to ‘familiar’ and ‘experienced’; it also has two pronunciations, shóu and shú, the latter more common with