中文挑战

Here's my try:

1. The girl is upset because the doctor has not given her flowers in a long time.

2. Because "有钱花" is not really a flower but the ability to spend money on her. It turns out that it's the same "花" for "花钱" (to spend money) and for flower.

3. I think the last "吗" is incorrectly used, since it's not a question. It should probably be "嘛".

@jkhsu: Not bad.

For 3., you're correct that it shouldn't be 吗 because the sentence isn't a question. But why should it be 嘛, and not, say, 么?

@feihong:

The definition of 嘛 is that it states the obvious. So in the last sentence, she's saying that "she obviously likes 有钱花". Is that right?

Here's a good blog entry about 嘛.

Thanks for the blog link. It was good that you specifically asked about the "why" of using that word. I see that word quite often but never thought about the real meaning until you asked for it. So I learned something new!

Our local Caribou Coffee has a chalk board and every weeks asks a random opinion question (e.g. "What is your favorite travel destination?" "Who will win the World Series?", etc.).

This week, the question was "What is your favorite flower?". I was just about to write 有钱花, when I totally blanked on how to write "花". It was horrible!