买/卖

tingyun

July 16, 2011, 12:21 AM

Alot of the words on your list aren't seperate words - 买来 - mǎilái买到 - mǎidào买进 - mǎijìn买下 - mǎixià卖掉 - màidiào卖给 - màigěi - all should be understood through getting a mastery of the second term.  卖掉 works like 扔掉 丢掉 戒掉 etc, 买到 works like 转到 找到, 卖给 like 交给  etc.  You've probably observed these uses or other similar ones and have some understanding of them.  If not, you can look up 掉，到,etc - even in this case, best to understand each in the context of the many verbs it modifies, get a sense of it by seeing lots of examples.

As for the others - 购买 - gòumǎi is a formal version of 买.

 

售卖 - shōumài is a formal version for 卖 - but note you've got the tone a bit wrong, 售 is 4th tone, should be shou4mai4.  Note there is another term 出售 which has the same meaning.

Note that part of being formal means not only that they are to be used when speaking formally, but also relates to the kinds of parties involved and purchases/sales made. Even a fairly colloquial sentence might use 出售, and even a fairly formal sentence might use 卖, depending on the nature of the transaction.

The tone mistake might be because you've heard the word 收买, which is commonly used for bribery or for related means of purposfully trying to make people like you, ie 收买人心

出卖 - chūmài includes the same meaning as 售卖, ie formal version of 卖, but it is also commonly seen in the meaning of betraying, ie 出卖朋友. 

I apologize in advance that I might not see any replies - visits to Cpod boards have become much less frequent as I've gotten rather busy with other matters (happilly most of much involve chinese).

Tim

 

 

watyamacallit

July 19, 2011, 10:54 AM

The Chinese Pod crew continue to ignore my questions.

tingyun

July 20, 2011, 12:37 AM

I can't help if what you are looking for is the feeling of security associated with a Cpod sanctioned response - but if instead you just really want to understand the remaining ones that I left out in my above post as not technically being separate words, then perhaps I can be of help.

Note the differences in all the below are in emphasis and the feeling convey, as well as general trends of use - none change the basic meaning.

买来 - mǎilái 2 possibilities - a) emphasizes what you got out of the deal, ie spend ___ amount, 能买来 ___ (in other words focuses on the relationship between what you had to do/spend and what the results were) . b) buy and then bring back/return with

买到 - mǎidào 3 possibilities - a) emphasizes the ability to find or purchase a thing under certain conditions or in a certain place. b) emphasizes the ability to select/find/recognize/distinguish a good meeting certain criteria/conditions (ie price, quality, etc)...so where to go to find the cheapest of a kind, or recognize good quality among many options, etc. c) similar to 买来's role a in focusing on result of expenditure

买进 - mǎijìn I haven't run into this one enough to have a very clear intuition, beyond a sense of associating it with stock markets or extremely large scale transactions in goods

买下 - mǎixià a) emphasizes the exclusive and complete nature of the purchase - ie one company 买下 another company, it both owns the entire purchased company and noone else can buy the purchased company (because there is only one). Wouldn't expect to see this used in situations where either of these conditions aren't satisfied (unless writer is attempting to achieve an effect by exaggerating the subjective feelings of exclusivity and totality to a transaction that doesn't objectively have these characteristics). b) used with any specific result that involves expenditure to obtain, and that is a result that can be conceived of as fairly either/or in nature, ie spend ____ and achieve safety in a certain production process

卖掉 - màidiào emphasizes that you got rid of, disposed of the thing in question. Would not tend to be used by, say, a store that has a bunch of the thing in inventory and sells it daily, but would if you were getting rid of a stock that you now thought was too risky, or a company is getting rid of a division that had been losing money, etc

卖给 - màigěi Sell to ____, where the _____ is filled by whatever is after the 给. Thus it emphasizes and places focus on who the buyer in the transaction is, and thus would be used when you want to draw the reader/listener's attention to who the buyer is.

Note the above is intended to characterize the vast majority of uses - I'd imagine 95 percent fall into the uses noted above. But since the above aren't rigidly defined words, there is always the possibility for someone to use in a different way (especially when you take regional differences and the huge variations between individual people's language habits into account). But the above should help you understand what people are likely conveying when you encounter the above, and should be a good guide for how to use them yourself.

Obviously the above is based on a non-native speaker's intuition about subtle implications in the language...though from experience my intuition is usually very accurate, and I'd guess that if you ask 5 different native speakers you'll get 5 different answers, at least one of which will be consistent with mine. ;) Anyway, as I said the above are consistent with the uses of 到掉给下etc in other situations, so you should be able to notice patterns in feeling in how they work with other verbs.