"Imagine for a moment" and "Suppose that" in Mandarin

[Entropy_Rising]

Hi again - I've really been popping in and out of this forums for some drive-by translations, but I guess I shouldn't feel to guilty given the name of this particular form, eh? I'm pretty scatterbrained when it comes to studying Mandarin and I often realize I don't know how to say something in Mandarin in the whirlwind of my daydreaming. I like to dart here and ask about it before I forgot what I don't know how to say.

Anyways, I often present hypothetical scenarios to my students. Naturally I speak to them in English, and often preface these scenarios with the usual English phrase, "Imagine that," or "Suppose that (you're a space alien/you're stranded on a desert island/etc." For my lowest level classes I'm not sure if this whole time they haven't understood that important preface which alerts the students that we are going into a hypothetical, imaginary situation - they're real shy about telling me they don't understand and for all I know they've just been hearing the same cluster of meaningless syllables over and over again.

So I've resolve to teach all my classes once through Mandarin what I mean when I say "Imagine that" or "Use your imagination to" or "Suppose that."

But I don't know how to say it myself. Any suggestions for how to translate this phrase?

Thanks!

[SWWLiu]

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Quote from Entropy_Rising:

So I've resolve to teach all my classes once through Mandarin what I mean when I say "Imagine that" or "Use your imagination to" or "Suppose that."

But I don't know how to say it myself. Any suggestions for how to translate this phrase?

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I suppose "假設" (jia3 she4) would do for the last of the three sentence fragments. I think you will need to be more verbose to properly convey the sentiment in the first two.

[Luobot]

I’ll take a stab at it just for fun and see what others say.

Basic sentence structure:

大家假装成 …

da4jia1 jia3zhuang1 cheng2 …

Everybody pretend you’re …

Example sentence:

大家假装成外星人

da4jia1 jia3zhuang1 cheng2 wai4xing1ren2

Everybody pretend you’re a space alien

[Entropy_Rising]

Thanks to both of you. Both of those suggestions seem to be right what I was looking for.

[Dengxiaomai]

One way you could set up your scenarios is by using this pattern:

比如说/比如 For example, suppose.

如果、要是 If

的话 If - though not added at the beginning of the sentence. This usually appears w/ 如果、要是

比如说，（如果）你是美国总统的话，你会提出什么政策？

For example/suppose, if you were the president of America what policies would you put forward.

Max Dunn

[here2learn]

Thanks, that was all helpful for me too.

Now for a commercial break... does anyone know that VISA ad on TV in the US? Here's one I just made up...

Methods of learning Chinese:

chinese newspaper and dictionary: $25

Pimsleur set: $125

trip to China: $2500

being able to say

(luobot)

大家假装成外星人

da4jia1 jia3zhuang1 cheng2 wai4xing1ren2

Everybody pretend you’re a space alien

: priceless