Is there a pattern for "somebody/something is so verb/adjective that..." in Chinese?
xiaophil
September 19, 2010, 04:45 AM posted in I Have a QuestionI feel deja vu coming on. I know I have seen a discussion on this, but I cannot remember where and what the result was. So...
Is there a pattern for "somebody/something is so verb/adjective that..." in Chinese?
For example, If I wanted to translate, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," I would probably say 我很饿，所以我能把一头马吃光了. But this is a work-around. How would a Chinese person say it?
It seems to me I remember somewhere a pattern. It was something like "somebody/something verb/adjective + 得..." For example, 我饿得我能把一头马吃光了. Is this sentence okay?
xiaophil
Ahh, good observation. I actually looked at nciku.com, but I didn't make the right search. I'll have to did deeper. Thanks.
zhenlijiang
September 19, 2010, 08:36 AMHi Xiaophil, is this the discussion you mean? I guess it doesn't really cover the question you have now, and I also have a feeling it may have been preceded by some other related discussion that gave rise to the post. Thought I'd throw it up here anyway.
I was just going through the Group posts in I Have a Question by the way (the titles for most of them, not the actual threads). It was like cleaning out my desk at the end of the year. Re-discovered a lot of good stuff there.
xiaophil
That indeed is the discussion. Thanks.
I have been very busy lately, so I don't have much time to post as of late. I'm really glad that people still find this useful. And yes, it is a good idea to flip through those old posts. Anyway, thanks for the support, Zhen!
calkins
September 20, 2010, 02:25 PMHi xiaophil, 好久不見cpod!
To say "I'm so hungry I could eat a cow" you could say:
我餓得可以吃下一頭牛。
I love this phrase and use it often.
The sentence pattern for the above sentence is:
N/PN + SV 得 .......
You could also use the following similar patterns:
V 得 N/PN .......
我吃了很多，吃得我走不動了。
I ate so much that I can't walk.
N/PN + V 得 .......
我吃了很多，吃得走不動了。
I ate so much that I can't walk.
SV 得 N/PN .......
我走了一天的路，累得我一坐下就睡著了。
I walked all day and was so tired that I fell asleep as soon as I sat down.
go_manly
September 19, 2010, 05:53 AMIf you type "was so" or "is so" into Nciku, you get a large number of sentences of this type. There seems to be nothing special about them - just cause followed by result. Similar to your first sentence, but without 所以 or other connecting word.