No one can cure my sickness!

paulinurus
November 22, 2009, 06:37 PM posted in General Discussion

大家好,不好意思我很久不这里写帖子,当秋天的时候我工作太忙哦!Sorry guys for not posting here for a long time, in the fall my work load is way too busy!

Here's a phrase I read this weekend which I think is a 'no way' a West brain would know how to structure without learning it as a 'chunk' because the reasoning and the literal wordings of a Chinese sentence can be quite different from the way we structure the words in the English language to convey the same meaning.   

A: 听说你身体不好,常常去看医生。你怎么了?Tīng shuō nǐ zuìjìn shēntǐ bùhǎo, chángcháng qù kàn yīshēng. Nǐ zěnme le?

B: 我过敏。Wǒ guòmǐn.

A: 你对什么过敏?Nǐ duì shénme guòmǐn

B: 我不知道,医生们也不知道,所以谁都治不好我的病。Wǒ bù zhǐdào, yīshēngmen yě bù zhīdào, sǒuyī shuí dōu zhì bù hǎo wǒde bìng.

谁都治不好我的病 who all treat no good my sickness = no one can cure my illness.

Why don't (can we?) just write this Chinese phrase in the WB format? For example, something like this:没有医生知道治我这样的病.

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zhenlijiang
November 23, 2009, 01:42 AM

谁 is who; it's also whoever.

To my E(?)B, 谁都治不好我的病 registers initially as something like Whoever it may be (No matter who it is), they can't cure my sickness before it gets rendered to more natural English.

For what it's worth.

In relation to this uneasiness WB may have with 谁都, if the rhetorical 什么苦没吃过 from Love Tangle 2 were phrased differently——
什么吃过——would WB find that easier to understand?

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changye
November 23, 2009, 02:57 AM

You can also say "没有医生能治我的病", but probably "谁都治不好" carries a stronger sense of "no one can cure".

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connie
November 24, 2009, 02:55 AM

谁都治不好我的病。

这是中文里的一种特殊结构,”疑问词+都......“ 意思是 ”每......“

谁都讨厌他。

什么都爱吃。

哪儿都去过。

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paulinurus
November 24, 2009, 04:54 AM

Connie, 感谢,我明白了,很有意思。

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bababardwan
December 17, 2009, 02:02 PM

paul,

Sorry if I missed it mate but just curious..where is urus anyway? I see there are a few about like near Lima,but I thought you were in Canada.