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| #2 | Mandarin by Aimerais | |
|---|---|---|
| Mandarin | English | |
我收到了你的測試結果。你當然患了瘧疾。我有寫給你一些關於如何吃這種藥物的信息。首先吃四粒藥丸，六個小時後，多吃兩粒。然後，下個星期每天吃兩粒藥丸。不恢復的話，請回來。 Wǒ shōu dào le nǐ de cèshì jiéguǒ. Nǐ dāngrán huàn le nüèjí. Wǒ yǒu xiě gěi nǐ yìxiē guānyú rúhé chī zhè zhǒng yàowù de xìnxī. Shǒuxiān chī sì lì yàowán, liù gè xiǎoshí hòu, duō chī liǎng lì. Ránhòu, xià gè xīngqí měitiān chī liǎng lì yàowán. Bù huīfù dehuà, qǐng huílái. | I’ve received the results of your test. You’ve definitely contracted malaria. I’ve written you some information regarding how to consume this kind of medicine. First, take four pills. Six hours later, eat two more. Then, for the next week, take two every day. If you don’t recover, please come back. | |
VOCABULARY
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GRAMMARColloquial Mandarin Chinese is an analytic, tonal, generally mono- or disyllabic language typified by its marked lack of information. Indeed, Mandarin does not mark number, tense, case, plurality, definiteness, or other things comforting to speakers of European languages. Chinese is written in a logographic writing system which does not mark word boundaries. The included romanization does mark word boundaries. Word order is nearly always SVO. However, subjects and objects are very often dropped when understood from context. Verbs do not conjugate and are tenseless by default (i.e. the base form has no tense information associated with it). Aspect and other information is marked through the use of pre- and post-verbal particles; in this text, the particles 有, 了, and 到 appear. The imperative form is the same as the base form. 請 (literally ‘please’) preceding a verb marks a polite imperative. Nouns are understood to be definite by default. The indefinite marker is the number ‘一’ yì, meaning ‘one.’ When nouns are preceded by a numeral or certain determiners, an appropriate classifier must be inserted in between. The correct classifier is determined by the type of noun in question. The classifier has no lexical meaning, but serves to disambiguate the next word. Subjects are often dropped and are understood through context. Two meanings of 的 are found in this text. Fundamentally, 的 is a possessive particle with an identical meaning to ‘s in English. Example: 我的 = ‘my.’ 的 also has a relativizing meaning. In a Mandarin relative clause, 的 comes at the end of the clause but before the main noun. Here is an example:
‘The boy that eats.’ |