A Complement is Not a Compliment

Today I had my first practice exam in Chinese. This is a much more informal version of the big test designed to give you an idea of where you are in relation to where you should be based on how much time you have been in training...and also to make you feel very, very stupid. Okay, I'm only kidding about that last part (not really). While I was dreading the exam, I mean who likes exams? But, frankly, it wasn't that bad. The best advice I came away with was my need to really pay attention to the small grammatical details and polish up a bit. My tester said I was well on my way to meeting my personal test goals, but I have a few very basic grammatical mistakes which disrupt my fluency. I recognize that this is due to many years of bad Chinglish habits owing to the great length in time between formal language learning, so I really need to focus on making sure those silly mistakes don't trip me up.

This exam was actually a bit of a pick me up in terms of making me feel better about how I will perform on the actual exam. The last few weeks have been particularly rough as I acquired a new, particularly demanding instructor. He's very nice, but he demands a lot. In addition, I realized that we are less than 2 months away from our move. When did that happen??!! So I kind of panicked a bit and started trying to study as much as possible. This turned out to be a rather poor idea, as it seems the more I study the more vocabulary I lose. For every new word or grammar point, it seems I've lost two others. *sigh*

I recently came across a quote I found very apropos for my current situation, "the more you travel, the more you realise how little you have seen, just as when you learn a language the amount left to learn seems to grow rather than diminish."* After studying Chinese off and on (more off than on) for the last almost 20 years, I can definitely relate. Chinese is such an interesting language. It many ways it is very straightforward and logical. Characters have individual meanings (most of the time) and are combined to make very logical combinations. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 电脑 (diànnǎo), which combines the character for electricity with the character for brain. Literally: an electric brain.

But, complements, oh complements, they are the bane of my existence (besides my old nemesis "le," but "le" fucks with everyone, so that's a given). You might be wondering what is a complement? It sounds rather nice. The answer, my friends, is that there is no answer. Because there is no English equivalent. According to the Chinese Grammar Wiki, it can be a verb, an adjective, a prepositional phrase, a measure word phrase, or a long, complex phrase. The following chart breaks it down**:

Structure of Complements

Word Preceding Complement	Complement Content	Complement Types	Example
Verb	Verb	Result complement	做完
		Potential complement	看得懂
		Direction complement	走回来
	Adjective	Result complement	做好
		State complement	想得很简单
	Prepositional phrase	Location complement	住在北京
		Time complement	生于69年
	Measure word phrases	Quantity complement	去一次
Adjective	Adjective	Degree complement	做完
		Result complement	做好
	Adverb	Degree complement	好极了
		Result complement	做好
	Other phrase	State complement	响得让人发

***"Other phrase" is my personal fave! 

Clearer now? Me, too!

As the Wiki suggests, "As a learner, the best thing you can do is to memorize the complements you encounter the most often, and start using them." *sigh*

*Really, you should go read this man's story of traveling the world in his car, Otto. It is pretty amazing. 
**Also courtesy of the Chinese Grammar Wiki