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**:
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 |
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*
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
**Also courtesy of the Chinese Grammar Wiki
3 comments:
Oh, wow. I can barely wrap my brain around complements. But I'm glad the practice test went well.
So I'm confused. What is the purpose of a compliment?
Gosh I'd love to learn Chinese, I think it would humble me quite a bit! Whenever someone tries to tell me Dutch is difficult to learn I want to tell them to shut the hell up (in a nice way).
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