Basic Sentence meaning?

pretzellogic
 September 04, 2010, 07:09 AM posted in General Discussion

Hi Grace,

I have been working on reading, and some of the sentences I have been reading have me confused. Many of them involve "dào" in the sentence pattern:

Subject + Verb Dào + Noun/Time word

Subject + Verb Dào + Place word + qù/lái

 I think I almost understand, but not quite.  What does this mean?

Wǒ bāndào Běijīng lái - I think this means "I moved to Beijing" or does it mean "I am moving to Beijing"?

Also, what about "bānjiā" - to move house? I'm not really sure what to do about that one.  Can I say the following:

Wǒ bānjiā Běijīng lái - I moved to Beijing?

I'm not sure what the correct translation of The following sentences should be:

Wǒmen yǐjīng shàngdao dì shíjiǔ kě le - We already attended the 19th class?

Nà fēngxìn, Nǐ yào jìdao nàér qù - I don't even know what to say about fēngxìn!

Thanks for your help!

 

 

Fred

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your

 

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grace_counselor
 September 04, 2010, 03:24 PM

Hi Fred,

Wǒ bāndào Běijīng lái – It’s not a finished sentence.

"I moved to Beijing." = Wǒ bāndào Běijīng lái le.

"I am moving to Beijing"= Wǒ yào bāndào Běijīng lái.

"bānjiā" - to move house, "bān" - to move, and “bāndào”- to move to.

You cannot say: Wǒ bānjiā Běijīng lái le. And you should say: Wǒ bāndào Běijīng lái le.

Because the structure of “bānjiā” is “verb+object”, you cannot add another object after it.

 

The translation for the two sentences should be:

Wǒmen yǐjīng shàngdao dì shíjiǔ kě le – We’ve already studied the 19th lesson.

Or  We’ve already studied 19 lessons.

Nà fēngxìn, Nǐ yào jìdao nàér qù –“fēng”is a measure word for xìn (letter). If you mean nǎr (where), the translation should be: Where do you want to mail that letter?

Hope that helps!

Grace

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pretzellogic

Hi Grace, one additional question: So if I want to say that we moved our house to Beijing on March 2009, we would say:

Wo3men 2009 nian2 san1 yue4 ban1jia1 Bei3jing1 lai2 le

Is that correct? Thanks.

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grace_counselor

Hi Fred, the translation should be: wǒmen 2009 nián sānyuè bāndào Běijīng lái le. (We don't add other object after "bānjiā", because its structure is "Verb+object".)