Learning Mandarin.

[wilsbrough]

Hi guy's.

I see that quite a few of us are trying to learn to speak Mandarin, either self taught or at night school/college etc. I thought a thread on helping each other out maybe helpful.

I have a question. It is about the word (ma) This is when it is used at the end of a sentence as a question form, ie, ni hao ma? (how are you?) My Question is, how do you know when to use it? As, if i ask you your name (Qing wen ni jiao shen me ming zi?) The question form ma is not used. This is really confusing me and if anyone can help with the answer, i would appreciate it.

Cheers,
Andy...

[Proteus]

Hi guy's.

I see that quite a few of us are trying to learn to speak Mandarin, either self taught or at night school/college etc. I thought a thread on helping each other out maybe helpful.

I have a question. It is about the word (ma) This is when it is used at the end of a sentence as a question form, ie, ni hao ma? (how are you?) My Question is, how do you know when to use it? As, if i ask you your name (Qing wen ni jiao shen me ming zi?) The question form ma is not used. This is really confusing me and if anyone can help with the answer, i would appreciate it.

Cheers,
Andy...

Morning Andy :icon_cool:

Simply speaking, you can take it this way. "?"(ma) is used in what we call general question in grammar. By general question we mean whose answered with "yes" or "or".

ni ming bai le ma?

In Chinese we form a general question not by changing order of words as you do in English, for example , "Do you understand?" We keep the narrative order and add "ma" to indicate it's a question.

But in those wh- and how questions, like you do in English, we have interrogative words equivalent to your wh-s and how, so "ma" is not needed. (but again, no change or words order)

I have made myself clear "ma"?

[Willy The Londoner]

Not sure if that answer was so clear to me.  To be more basic Andy.

Ni Bao ma?   is asking the question are you full.    (When eating)

When ma is used at the end it is asking a question.

Wo Bao le.  is answering it saying your full.  This is a good phrase to remember if a dish comes up that you do not like the look of!!!   They often just say Bao le and forget the wo.

Not sure how to put it gramatically but the 'le' is used to signify something has happened.  

Willy

[mustfocus]

Now you've got me thinking... :dodgy:

I've never given it much though.  In my home dialect, we have something similar (we end those questions with buey).  I'll have to think on this one for a while.  Great.  I have a presentation to deal with on Tuesday for a night school course (not chinese) and you've gone and stuck this in my head...ARGH!


In-Jaul

[wilsbrough]

Not sure if that answer was so clear to me.  To be more basic Andy.

Ni Bao ma?   is asking the question are you full.    (When eating)

When ma is used at the end it is asking a question.

Wo Bao le.  is answering it saying your full.  This is a good phrase to remember if a dish comes up that you do not like the look of!!!   They often just say Bao le and forget the wo.

Not sure how to put it gramatically but the 'le' is used to signify something has happened.  


Willy

Thanks guys...

Right, I think i know what you are saying Willy, I know to use ma? at the end of the sentence is to ask the question, but i have noticed that not all questions end with the word ma? This is what i found confusing, but from what i understand Proteus is saying is that all questions will end in ma? Ie, How are you (ni hao ma?) Are you English? (Ni shi Ying guo ren ma?) But questions that start with the letters wh, Ie, who are they? (Ta men shi shei?) What is the date of this wednesday? (Zhe ge xing qi san shi ji yue ji hao?) Will not end in the word ma? Is this correct? Maybe i should try and learn french as Mandarin is damn hard....:icon_cheesygrin:

Andy....

[David5o]

Andy,

This is the reason they need native English speaking teachers in China. What your probably learning is the correct spoken and written mandarin, Where as what is commonly spoken is sometimes very different.

When we speak to our friends, we often leave out words, or a bit of slang gets thrown in, that's exactly what happens in Chinese too!! ....Confusing?? You bet it is, which is one reason i gave up trying to learn the language fluently, that and the many different tones to the same word...lol!! But i can still get by quite well with some very, very simple sentences and a vocabulary of about 250 words or so.... lol!!

Just use the correct terminology your being taught for now, at least they will understand what your saying, and leave the slang and abbreviations to a later date when you understand the language a bit better.....  if ever!! ...haha!!

David.....

[Proteus]

Oh, I find one more explanation needed. Just as David pointed out, accurate and precise Chinese are sometimes different from spoken Mandarin.

In the case of "how are you", its accurate Chinese translation is "ni zen me yang"(?) which needs not a "ma" to end the sentence because how and wh- sentence both deny a "ma" ending.

And "ni hao ma" should be accurately translated into English as "Are you fine?" So it's a general question and requires a "ma".

So don't be frustrated, is't one of the two exceptions you'll encounter in the rule of "ma"

The other is "ni zai gan ma?" (what are you doing), here "ma" is no longer a question mark, it has a concrete meaning as "what" and the intonation of it changes from first to second.

[Hans]

Proteus already explained it a bit. I am far from an expert on the subject, but there are different ways of asking questions in Mandarin, just like in other languages. Often the word order of a question and a statement/an answer is the same. For example: just replace the shénme (??) with the statement/answer: ? (When did they come?), (but of course only ? will do) (They arrived last week).

Then you have the ? construction and the construction (there are several others too, but never mind):

Are you my teacher?
????  (Ni shi wo lao shi ma?)
?? (Ni shi bu shi wo lao shi?)

And then there are all of the little short ? (o)?? (a)?? (la) which are hard to use in the beginning but make the language sound smoother and more fluent. We use those kinds of words/sounds in our Western languages too. But they have nothing to do with ?! Hehe.

[mustfocus]

I think I have a different way to explain it that might help.  (This was the last question on my mind before I fell asleep.  How bad is that)

Put simply, the questions that do not require a "ma" are asking for specific answers or explanations...

Ni shi shei? (who are you)
Ni ai chi shen me? (what do you want to eat)
Ni de jia zai na li? (where is your home)

The questions are looking for specific answers.  Now let's look at three more questions...

Ni hao ma? (how are you)
Ni bao ma? (are you full)
Ni hen lei ma? (are you very tired)

When answering these questions, you can generally answer (I think that's what Proteus means by the term general question) with the same "word" (hen hao, bao le, hen lei) or with a "yes or no" type answer.  Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but I think that's as basic as we can make it.

Hope that helps.  But please note, my chinese is a combination of multiple dialects, so there are definitely lots of gaps to deal with.


In-Jaul

[brett]

Yes I am now learning Mandarin. I work at a University so I enrolled on the Mandarin module. My goodness it is hard going as it's a degree level course in an internationally regarded linguistics department. The other students are very good. I can recommend going to your local University if you want a top quality Mandarin course, our teacher is very good.

[Hans]

I study Mandarin at the university in Stockholm (part time, during the evenings). We have one Chinese teacher and one Swedish teacher. It is said that Asian and Western people actually think differently. This is evident during our classes with the Chinese teacher. Some of our questions she doesn't even understand. We've learned to save those for our Swedish teacher instead (the fact that her English is not top notch obviously doesn't help). I've talked to people who've studied in China and the differences between Chinese and Western (or Swedish) way of teaching are pretty big. In Sweden the pupils are encouraged to improvise and not follow a strict manual while it is quite the opposite in Chinese teaching. Unsurprisingly, our Chinese teacher follows the text book very strictly while our Swedish teacher hardly uses it.