Occasionally, you'd come across a Chinese phrase or sentence and after reading the English translation you'd say to yourself, "No way my West Brain would know how to say it this way!" That is because the words in a Chinese phrase or sentence can be structured quite differently than in the English language. That's what this group is about. When we come across a phrase/sentence which is structured quite differently from English, we'll post it here to share our finding with others. 

Discovering 'the way' will involve vocabulary, grammar, and cultural mannerism of expressions. So, with one stone (err.. I mean group) you'd kill three birds (hunted for the purpose of consumption, of couse) on your journey to learn the Chinese language. The two language minds (WB and EB) meet when there is a 'resolution'. Resolutions eventually lead to language fluency - easily switching from one brain to another.

- 到 dao4 in a sentence

> 车子修好以前 Simple is beautiful! Thanks!

(18)   new comment by posted June 30, 2010

- Elementary dear Watson

Seems to me, Chinese dialogues often contain 'emphasis' or 'reaffirmation' adverbs . For example, in English when we make a request such as "hold it", it is understood that we want the person to hold it well, i.e. without dropping it. In Chinese, suc...

(2)   new comment by posted May 31, 2010

- burden

Thanks everyone for your input.

(8)   new comment by posted May 13, 2010

- question? structure

Correction: Characters should read nǐ hái kěyǐ yīcì fùqīng bù? 你还可以一次付清不? 付清 [pay+clear] is a phrase meaning "pay in full"

(3)   new comment by posted May 12, 2010

- Tough sentence to translate

With help from Changye, here's my revised analysis of this sentence. I found that placing brackets in a complex sentence to break it up into components does help me to understand how the East Brain thinks. [它让我想起一些][一直陪伴着我]的人，而[(他们给我带...

(7)   new comment by posted April 28, 2010