Hi, I need your help

toianw

November 28, 2010, 05:18 PM posted in Transcripts with Tal

Hi guys,

I had a bit of free time on my hands this afternoon, so I’ve attempted to transcribe yesterday’s upper intermediate lesson, Second-hand Bicycle. One thing I’ve realised is that all the little exclamations (ah, er, oh, um – this kind of equivalent in English), I’ve no idea how to express in Chinese. So before I post the transcript, I thought I’d try and clear some of these up (there’s a lot!).

I’ve had a quick browse through other poddies’ transcripts, and it seems that these are the most commonly used are: 嗯，啊，哦，噢，哎，唉，诶

So, I’ve tried to get my head around how these are used. This is what I’ve come up with.

嗯 [pinyin en1 (ng)] – A “grunt” to signify you agree (maybe translated as “Yes, that’s right”)

啊 – [a]

1^st tone – Ah, Oh (shows surprise)

2^nd tone – eh (to express doubt)

4^th tone - ah (shows agreement)

哦 [o]

2^nd tone – Oh (shows doubt or surprise)

4^th tone – Oh (as if you’ve just learnt something)

噢 [o1] – Oh (indicates understanding or acknowledgement)

哎 [ai1] – Oh, Hey (indicates surprise or dissatisfaction / or a warning)

[Can this be second tone as well?]

唉 [ai1] (indicates agreement)

诶 [ei]

2^nd tone (indicates surprise)

4^th tone (indicates disagreement)

These are dictionary definitions so I’m not sure how well they correspond to actual usage. Any corrections, clarifications, additions etc would be most welcome.

Many thanks,

Ian

toianw

November 24, 2010, 04:38 PM

Sorry about that nasty looking apostrophe up there in the title.

How can you edit a post, anyway?

zhenlijiang

Hi toianw, to edit your orignal post, if you click on Posts under Community (in the grey bar at the bottom of the page) that will take you to a list of all the posts you've made. Click on the pencil icon on the far right to get you into that post, where you can edit and re-publish it.

toianw

Ah, thanks for that - I see it now.

toianw

November 24, 2010, 04:40 PM

So I guess my real question is how do you guys know what to use? Do you go by the sound, the meaning that fits best or a combination?

Which are most common? (嗯 seems to be used a lot, apart from that I’m not sure)

Do you usually know what’s being said, or do you guess sometimes?

Would a Chinese person even be able to go over their own transcript and know which one they used? (there seems to be quite a bit of overlap)

Also, a few times, David uses an “er” (sounds like a pinyin e) like we do in English while thinking what to say next. What Chinese character is used for this?

Thanks for your help.

flibberdie

November 24, 2010, 07:05 PM

Hi, Ian. I make lots of mistakes with these so I'm glad to see you putting a guide together.

Right now I'm traveling but I'll check back in later.

Patti

zhenlijiang

November 25, 2010, 07:15 AM

Hey, great to see interest in these and an effort to consolidate. I obsess about these. One of the tags in my onsite vocab list is "sounds" (picked up from Dialogues and Expansion sentences). I've long thought I'd share the list once I got the 汉字 matched up with meanings/uses, but have a feeling that isn't going to happen anytime soon. Seems like there isn't a single authoritative answer for many of the cases, and Chinese people probably don't think much about which hanzi, the sounds are often almost involuntary. Like you say I think there is overlap, also personal preferences. Maybe even some mainland-TW variation?

Here's a discussion I had with Jason recently on 哎. I've preferentially expressed a certain use of éi as 欸 ever since seeing it in my (Japanese-written) dictionary. Actually this J-C / C-J dictionary does make a valiant effort to list out all the sounds and tones and match up with uses and hanzi, but in the end that's what it is, a valiant effort (by diligent, probably obsessive, Japanese dictionary compilers). I still turn to it though.

When I'm transcribing I guess a lot. The sounds I always question are ai (ei) and o's (wo's), there are a number of hanzi associated with each of these sounds. ng's and a's I'm always happy to put down as 嗯 and 啊 respectively. As far as my transcripts go those two are the most common I think, then 哎，哎 (欸)--ai's and ei's--then maybe 哦，噢, o's.

A fellow Japanese poddie once recommended that I try to look at kids' manga such as 多啦A梦 and 樱桃小丸子, which is very good advice actually (that I have yet to act upon), because I think manga are one of the few places we'll get to see so many of these sounds expressed in text (some character or other is always jumping out of his skin in surprise, whining or wheedling). I have bought a copy of 多啦A梦.

我们加油吧！

toianw

Thanks for your detailed reply Zhen, that's a very helpful start for me. So to summarise, we can probably get away with using just 嗯，啊，哎，哦，and 噢 (in approximate order of frequency) for most scenarios.

Also, if I understand correctly from your conversation with Jason, 哎 can also represent the pinyin sound [ei] in various tones. In David's Chinese, I here this [ei] sound a lot in the forth tone when agreeing to John (similar function to 嗯). Do you think this is best represented as 哎?

zhenlijiang

Toianw, 嗯, I think so, for your first two questions.

For the third--right, David says èi, shìde frequently--my dictionary tells me 欸. But yeah so again, given my exchange with Jason I guess 哎 can express that.

FYI my dictionary tells me this 欸 expresses [ei] and [e] in all four tones and can also represent āi, ǎi. [ē / ēi] - calling for someone's attention, or opening a question. [é / éi] - light interjection, you find something strange or dubious. [ě / ěi] - expressing disagreement, [è / èi] - expressing agreement or consent. But when I try to type it on my computer (MS PinYin) I can only get the character to appear under ai.

... more confusion than clarification maybe! I hope others will have input too.

toianw

Interesting. I'm using MS Pinyin and can get 欸 by typing ei. And the dictionary definition seems to correspond to the usage we're hearing. Maybe it's all just down to personal preference. It seems you could use 诶 for this too.

toianw

November 25, 2010, 09:29 AM

Anyone got any ideas about this...

Also, a few times, David uses an “er” (sounds like a pinyin e) like we do in English while thinking what to say next. What Chinese character is used for this?

toianw

Maybe 呃 can be used for this?

Just come across it in one of the "Saved by the Gong" dialogues.

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/saved-by-the-gong-history/dialogue

zhenlijiang

A search in the Glossary here brings up these. FYI many are from the Shanghainese series.

http://chinesepod.com/tools/glossary/entry/呃

toianw

Hi Zhenlijiang,

I didn't study the Shanghainese series, but the usage in those sentences seems to be different. In all the Shanghainese examples, the 呃 is tacked on the the end of verbs or phrases. It's the ones that are translated as um, umm that I was thinking of. Still not sure this is what I'm after. In the few examples here the 呃 seems to be a bit more clueless than the one I hear in the lesson discussions.

Anyway, I think I've made a start on getting to grips with these now. I'll go back over the lesson transcript now and see what I can fill in. Thanks for your help.

zhenlijiang

OK, looking forward to your transcript.

guolan

March 02, 2011, 11:14 PM

Ian, 谢谢你。这就太方便了、太有用了。我会尽力用！