help for chinese beginner

[soulman2001au]

i've recently come across a new character in a newspaper several times but i cannot understand what it means in the sentence.

In the following sentence:

而克林顿的支持者则担心星期二总统初选投票的结果.

What does 则 mean. A dictionary search does not adequately explain what it means.

And also how many characters does a native chinese speaker, who grew up and is educated in China, know. Can they do a test on this site: http://www.clavisinica.com/character-test-applet.html

and post their results here?

Thanks all

[Li Yuzuo]

则 ze2,

a kinda like "but", turn things to opposite way.

[YangDizi]

In the example sentence, [POP=ér...zé...]而……则……[/POP] expresses the idea of "however" (i.e. an idea that is unexpected or runs contrary to what has already been expressed); this structure is equivalent in meaning to [POP=dào]倒[/POP] or [POP=què]却[/POP].

In relatively formal written Chinese, 则／則 also commonly functions as [POP=jiù]就[/POP] does in the vernacular ([POP=báihuà]白话／白話[/POP]) to express cause and effect, or that a state of affairs pre-exists a given event.

[imron]

Think of it more like "on the other hand", and it's used to compare/contrast against the part of the sentence before the 而.

e.g.

而……则……

whereas ...... on the other hand ......

Regarding your other question see:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/180-imports-into-english05

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/13036-how-many-characters-is-enough

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11984-charactorusage-statistic

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11620-character-to-words-ratio

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/13331-1000-cny-challenge-how-many-characters-needed-to-read-chinese

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=78615

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/80-how-many-chinese-characters-are-there

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/4581-total-number-of-chinese-characters

[soulman2001au]

thanks guys. now i can rest in peace and read newspaper articles properly. btw, old dictionaries are not good for the up to date vocabulary of today

[imron]

old dictionaries are not good for the up to date vocabulary of today

8th January 2008 01:38 PM

I think for some words like this it's just really difficult to provide an accurate translation in English for the meaning, as there are so many ways in which it could be used and so many translations that could be acceptable. In this sort of situation, I often find that looking them up in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary provides much clearer insight into the meaning of the word. For example, under one of the definitions for 则 the 现代汉语词典 gives the meaning as "表示对比", or, expresses contrast/comparison.

[greenmoon55]

I am not able to take the test because the it says "null" all the time.(sh)