Qing Wen Deathmatch
pretzellogic
November 12, 2009, 02:33 AM posted in General DiscussionHas anyone ever encountered a situation where a sentence pattern didn't unfold the way you thought, and it was due to the conflict between two or more sentence patterns? I was thinking I understood "qilái" sort of, but what if you added "bǐ"? For example:
It's really hard to fly an airplane
fēijī fēi qìlái hén nán
It's hard to ride a bike
zìxíngchē zuò qìlái hén nán
It's hard to ride a bike, but even harder to fly an airplane.
zìxíngchē zuò qìlái hén nán bǐ fēijī fēi qìlái hén nán
No doubt there's plenty wrong with my example, but hopefully, the point is illustrated enough.
I guess i'm not quite clear when, as a general set of grammar rules, when certain sentence patterns take precedent.
Yes, the answer is the usual "it depends" and "it depends on the context of what you're trying to say", but I guess I was wondering about specific examples of when this occurs, or really more interestingly, what are the exceptions to the rules. Maybe there should be a series of Qing Wens to explain what happens when sentence patterns collide, and which sentence pattern takes precedent over another and when.
helenshen_counselor
November 12, 2009, 06:18 AM@pretzellogic, thank you for your suggestion.
It's hard to ride a bike, but even harder to fly an airplane.
开飞机比骑自行车难。kāi fēijī bǐ qí zìxíngchē nán.
It's hard to ride a bike.
骑车很难。qíchē hěnnán
It's really hard to fly an airplane.
开飞机很难。kāi fēijī hěnnán
A+比+ B+ adj...
Cheers!!!
simonpettersson
November 12, 2009, 05:00 AMDoesn't "qǐlái" (note: third tone qǐ) used in this way have connotations of "it seems that"? 飞机飞起来很难 fēijī fēiqǐlái hěn nán I'd interpret as "It seems really hard to fly an airplane".
Also, for the type of sentence you're after, in this case I think you'd use 更, gèng, "even more". So 更难, gèngnán, "even harder".
And to make it worse, I'm not sure 飞 fēi is actually the verb used to fly a plane. For a bike, I'm pretty sure it's 骑, qí, "to ride". For a car it's 开, kāi, to drive. For a plane I don't know, but nciku sort of suggests it's 驾驶, jiàshǐ, "to steer".
So to write "It's hard to ride a bike, but even harder to fly an airplane" I'd go with 骑自行车很难，但是驾驶飞机更难, qí zìxíngchē hěnnán, dànshì jiàshǐ fēijī gèng nán.
Neither of which actually answers your question, but I'm not qualified to do that. :) I hope I didn't muddle things or sidetrack the conversation.