Deutsch Und Chinese

8/16/2019 Deutsch Und Chinese

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Modalpartikel: How To Sound Like A NativeSpeaker Of German

In your conversations with German native speakers, it’s possible thatyou have h eard so me words w hose m eaning you co uldn’t quitegure out. These so-called modal particles a re words ( often short)that do not have a clear meaning, nor are required by anygrammatical rule. Then, what are they for? Well, they a re generallyused to emphasize what the speaker wants t o say. In addition, some

sentences just sound weird without them.

No meaning and no grammar? S o, how can I learn these words?Unfortunately, that is actually the problem. While the best way tolearn them would be to live in a German environment and hear themevery d ay, not everybody h as t his o pportunity. So, instead, I will

simply try to explain them by p roviding real-world examples a ndsituations i n which they w ould typically b e used by a native speaker.

The most common modal particles a re:

• denn• mal

• bloß

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• doch

• ja

• eigentlich• aber

• ruhig

• sowieso

• einfach

• halt

• eben

• schon

• vielleicht

While some of these, such as ja, aber, ruhig, einfach,bloß and vielleicht, a lso have an actual meaning, this m eaning onlyexists w hen they a re not being used as m odal particles. In thisarticle, we will see how this d ifference works.

denn


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Let’s start with a typical situation. You are at a friend’s place or at aparty a nd you start talking with somebody yo u don’t know. You mighteven ask t hem some questions a bout their job or where they are

from. Let’s co mpare these two sentences:

• Woher kommen Sie?

• Woher kommen Sie denn?

Here, denn is b eing used as a typical modal particle; it has n omeaning at all. So, please don’t get it confused with theconjunction denn , which means “because.” The conjunction versionis u sed to connect two sentences a nd is a lways placed at thebeginning of the second sentence. In contrast, the modal particleversion appears i n the middle (or at the end) of either a question or asentence.

So, what is t he difference between these two questions? Well, youare actually a sking almost the exact same thing in both examplesand it is very likely that each will elicit very similar responses.However, you might nd that you get different reactions t hough.

So why is t his? The m ost obvious a nswer is t hat the second questionis slightly longer. That’s it? Well, kind of. The truth is that the rstquestion sounds a bit like a police interrogation: too direct and fairly


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rude. With the addition of the modal particle, the question simplybecomes l onger, and therefore more polite and acceptable.

Another possible situation could occur if you accidently bump into afriend on the train or the bus:

• Wo fährst du denn hin? or Wohin fährst du denn?

•

Wo fährst du hin? or Wohin fährst du?

First of all, as yo u can see, there are two ways o f saying the samething. The version with wohin is t he standard question that you willnd in textbooks. However, in spoken language, wo and hin a re oftensplit into two parts. Therefore, both versions are included above.

In each pair of examples, the version without the modalparticle denn makes t he speaker seem overly inquisitive. In fact,only a certain intonation could make this q uestion seem appropriatewithout using denn . Again, the difference lies in the degree ofpoliteness.

Finally, the modal particle denn can also b e used to e xpresssurprise.


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• Wo kommst du denn her? (Where do you come from? Here,it is more of a rhetorical question.)

• Wie siehst du denn aus? (You look terrible! Literally: How doyou look like?)

• Was machen Sie denn da? (What the hell are you doing?)

mal

The particle mal ca n make a request sound more polite. It makes i tseem as t hough the speaker only wants t o bother the other personfor a brief period of time.

• Könnten Sie mir (bitte) mal helfen? (Could you please helpme just for a short moment?)

• Könnte ich (bitte) mal Ihren Stift haben? (Could I pleaseborrow your pen only for a few seconds?)

In the second sentence, it is i mplied that the pen will be returned assoon as p ossible. Without mal , one might think that the speakerwanted to keep the pen forever. With bitte , the sentence obviouslybecomes e ven more polite. One could say, the longer the sentenceis or the more modal particles i t contains, the more polite it is.


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• Kommen Sie (her)! (Please co me o ver here!)

• Kommen Sie bitte (her)!• Kommen Sie doch bitte (her)!

• Kommen Sie doch bitte mal (her)!

From the rst through the fourth sentences, the meaning remainscompletely the same, but the degree of politeness increases. Thismeans t hat the modal particles h ave the ability to change the tone ofthe sentence. her , which means “towards t he speaker,” makes thewhole issue a bit more complicated, however. While KommenSie! co uld be considered acceptable in certaincircumstances, Kommen Sie her! so unds p retty rude (imagine anangry general calling a soldier).

schon

Have you ever noticed that when Germans sp eak English, they use

the word “already” quite frequently? This is p robably b ecause theGerman word for “already” ( schon ) is used in a way that is differentfrom English.


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For instance, when asking whether you have “ever” done something,you would use schon mal .

• Warst du schon mal in Berlin? (Have yo u e ver been toBerlin?)

• Ja, ich war schon mal da. (Yes, I have.)

• Nein, ich war noch nie/nicht da. (No, I haven’t.)

The responses t o schon (mal) in the negative are nochnie and noch nicht .

Similarly, you can use this w ord when asking about whethersomething has be en done.

• Haben Sie den Brief schon geschrieben? (Have you writtenthe letter?)

• Ja, ich habe ihn schon geschrieben. (Yes, I have. Literally: Ihave written it already.)

• Nein, ich habe ihn noch nicht geschrieben. (No, I haven’t.Literally: I haven’t written it yet.)


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eigentlich

eigentlich so metimes h as a meaning that is s imilar to “actually.”

• Hast du eigentlich ein Auto?

Here, the speaker is e xpressing that they a re unsure about whetheror not the other person has a car. Again, without eigentlich, thequestion might sound somewhat rude.

doch

• Ich habe es dir doch schon erzählt. (I have told you thatalready.)

Here, doch emphasizes schon . For example, this s entence could bea r esponse to a nother speaker who h ad just expressed that theywere unsure about being told something previously. Thus, thisanswer is a little bit like saying “How can you not remember? I havealready told you, so you should know.”


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In other, more positive contexts, doch can be used to e xpresssurprise, such as i n:

• Das ist doch toll! (That is really great!)

Sometimes, doch ca n be used to express a slight degree of doubt.

• Das ist doch dein Auto, oder? (That is your car, isn’t it?)

ruhig

As a modal particle, ruhig doesn’t mean “calm” or “silent” as i t doeswhen it is b eing used as a n adjective. It means so mething morealong the lines of “don’t worry, no problem.”

• Kommen Sie ruhig rein! (Don’t worry! Come in!)

• Nehmen Sie sich ruhig Zeit! (No worries, take your time!)


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halt/eben

halt or eben both express resignation. Typically, the speaker wouldshrug their shoulders a t the same time:

• Das ist halt so. (That’s just the way it is!)

• Da kann man halt nichts machen. (There is nothing that canbe done about it.)

sowieso

A typical mistake that I often hear is wie so , which is p robablyintended to mean “like that.” This is not correct. Instead, if one wantsto say, “I like it like that” in German, they should use: I mag es so .However, this m istake might be due to the student having heard aword that is very similar: sowieso . This w ord is m ore or lessequivalent to “anyway.” Let’s se e some examples:

• Er kommt sowieso nicht mehr. (Anyway, he will not comeanymore.)


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• Ich habe sowieso keine Lust darauf, heute Abend ins Kino zu gehen. (Anyway, I am not keen on going to the movies

tonight.)

• Das ist sowieso besser so. (Anyway, it’s better this way.)

aber

Generally, aber is u sed as a conjunction meaning “but.” However, asa modal particle, it means s omething along the lines o f “though,” andis u sed to contradict what has j ust been said before or to emphasizethe content.

• Das ist aber gar nicht so schlecht. (That’s n ot bad, though.)

• Das passt mir heute aber gar nicht. (It doesn’t suit metoday.)

• Das ist aber eine Überraschung! (That is a surprise.)

ja


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In our l ast article, Learning Characters i s l ike Playing with Legos ,we learned how to w ritethree Chinese characters:

• yī

• èr

• sān

These characters m ean “one,” “two” and “three” respectively. Now, in this a rticle, we are going tocontinue to learn to write characters, but this t ime we are going to learn some really fun ones!

Pictographic ch aracters ( the ones we are going to learn about today) ar e fun because you cangure out the meaning of the character just by deciphering its sh ape. And w hat about othercharacters i n which this i s n ot possible? Well, we can still use character etymology a nd imaginationto make it easy a nd fun to learn those characters t oo!

Let’s talk about radicals

In the previous a rticle, I spoke about strokes b eing the basic c omponents o f character structure.However, we have another building block, which is t he “radical.” Basically, they a re like a Lego blockinside another Lego block. Lego-ception?

Radicals c onsist of anywhere from one to seventeen strokes. Most (but not all) radicals arecharacters t hemselves t oo! Learning non-character radicals w ill denitely h elp you to remember howto write actual characters, being that they t hemselves a re used in the their construction.Furthermore, radicals can help you to u nderstand the common semantic an d phonetic m eanings ofcharacters, so that you c an q uickly a nd efficiently d ecipher them!

https://www.italki.com/article/666/writing-chinese-characters-is-like-playing-with-legoshttps://www.italki.com/teachers/chinesehttps://www.italki.com/teachers/chinesehttps://www.italki.com/article/666/writing-chinese-characters-is-like-playing-with-legoshttps://www.italki.com/teachers/chinese


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So, let’s st art by h aving a look b ack at mā and mà from the rst art icle in this s eries, GettingStarted w ith Mandarin .

The character mā is b uilt from the radicals nǚ and mă nǚ , specically, means“female/woman.” So just knowing the nǚ com ponent alone, we no w know that mā is related tosomething female. Do you r emember what mā means?

On the other hand, mà is built with two kŏu components and and one mă

Specically, kŏu is a radical and a character that means “mouth.” So just knowing the meaning ofthe kŏu cha racter, we n ow know that this w ord has so mething to do with a mouth. So, do youremember what mà means?

Fun Tip: If you happen to have a hard copy o f a C hinese dictionary, then yo u c an look u p acharacter by i ts r adical. We use radicals t o index our characters.

Today’s Characters

We are going to look a t three different characters t oday, two of which are radicals. For eachcharacter, we will look a t the etymology a nd at additional tips f or remembering them. Since there aredifferent explanations for the character etymology, I picked out the ones that are most interesting forour characters t oday.

The three c haracters t hat we l ooked a t last time used only h orizontal strokes, which arecalled héng . This t ime, we are going to learn about ones w ith vertical strokes. The name for thevertical stroke is shù . Remember:

• To write héng , we go from left to right, from point A to point B.

https://www.italki.com/article/648/getting-started-with-mandarin-chinesehttps://www.italki.com/article/648/getting-started-with-mandarin-chinesehttps://www.italki.com/article/648/getting-started-with-mandarin-chinesehttps://www.italki.com/article/648/getting-started-with-mandarin-chinesehttps://www.italki.com/article/648/getting-started-with-mandarin-chinese


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• To write shù , we go from top to bottom, from point A to point B.

héng

Horizontal stroke

shù

Vertical stroke

Before yo u proceed: The stroke order is i mportant for several reasons w hen you are learning to

write Chinese characters. However, for the purposes o f this a rticle, we are going to focus o nrecognizing the characters only. Thus, keep in mind that the way that I will explain the characters willgenerally ignore the stroke order.

Character One

For our rst character, we are going to take the character for the number “one” and draw a verticalline right through the middle of it, forming a cros s.

So you should do something like this:

Step #1: Write “one” in Chinese.

•

Step #2: Add shù.

•


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shí is t he number “ten.” It is a n ideogram which highlights t he four directions: north, south, eastand west ( ArchChinese ). Think o f a compass! Each endpoint points t o a d ifferent directionrespectively.

However, it looks n othing like the value “ten,” so we are going to have to use a memorization tip toremember this cha racter. The most popular one used by m y st udents i s t o remember the Englishletter T from “ten.” This i s a ctually a tip that one of my yo ung students ca me up with!

Interesting cultural note: We h ave h and si gns for the numbers on e t hrough ten, and the way t hatwe represent “ten” is b y c rossing our index ngers, thus f orming the shape of its c haracter. So, ifyou were aware of this co ncept already, then remembering the character for “ten” will be super easy!

Character Two

For this ch aracter, we are going to build upon the Chinese character for the number “two.” However,this t ime we are going to draw a vertical line only t hrough the middle of the rst horizontal line, andstop at the second horizontal one.

http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html?find=%E5%8D%81http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html?find=%E5%8D%81


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Step #1: Write “two” in Chinese.

•

Step #2: Add shù.

•

Another way to remember how to write this c haracter is t o add one horizontal line after you write thecharacter “ten,” which actually follows the correct stroke order as w ell.

tŭ is a pictographic ch aracter t hat means “a mound ( ) on the ground ( )” ( YellowBridge ).

In other words, it means s oil, dirt, or earth. Two examples t hat use the tŭ radical and have asimilar meaning a re dì (land) and chén (d ust, dirt).

If the character etymology i t not helping much, we can also use a little imagination!

http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E5%9C%9Fhttp://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E5%9C%9Fhttp://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E5%9C%9F


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So, did you guess “ king”? wáng is t he character for “king.” It is a lso a c ommon s urname! Whowouldn’t want the last name King?

Conclusion

Now that we are done, did you notice that for each of these three c haracters, I either referenced thecharacter etymology or made up a st ory to h elp you remember them? W hat kind of images o rstories come to mind when you see these three characters? Remember: it’s a lright if these imagesonly m ake sense to you! On the o ther hand, if you feel that the character etymology is e nough t ohelp yo u remember them, then yo u d on’t need to u se a ny a dditional creative i mages!

This i s a s f ar as w e will go with characters f or now. In our next article, we are going to look a t a

“magic” t rick with , and to instantly increase your vocabulary e leven times! Stay tunedfor more f un and c ool Chinese Mandarin articles!

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