How to say "I have lots of...."

[bumclouds]

Hey guys,

I'm really stuck on how to say "I have lots of homework".. I am making a roleplay for my chiense (beginners level) class, and I want person A to explain that they are tired because they have lots of uni homework.

A: Wo hen lei.

B: Ni kanshangqu you yidian lei. Weishenme?

A: (I have lots of homework).

Would you say "wo you tai gongke"? Is that incorrect? It doesn't seem right.

[zhxlier]

我有很多作业（要做）。

[davidj]

I'm pretty sure that this

B: Ni kanshangqu you yidian lei. Weishenme?

is the difficult one here, and I'm pretty sure it is wrong.

Are you trying to say they look tired? That doesn't fit given that you have already admitted that you are tired. I wonder if you are really trying to say "you certainly look a bit tired". If that is the case, I think you need to translate the "certainly" and also you want to translate look as "appear" rather than "see". The question seems too abrupt.

As this is zuoye I don't want to give away all the answers, and I'm far from certain that I have the right way of saying this, but as a hint of the lines I'm thinking on, here are the initial letters, as you might find in a Chinese web page name:

hxnxlyd. wsml? or maybe with the question wsmnml? I'm least certain about the hx.

I suspect, though, that you are working outside the vocabulary and grammar that you should know at that stage.

[davidj]

It looks like 看上去 is probably OK.

It's not a phrase I've seen before and it wasn't in the Pleco version of the Oxford dictionary, but Google comes up with a lot of hits on it. I was thinking about 像, but I can't find examples, so that's probably wrong。

There is only one real Google hit on "看上去有一点累", but all variants with 一点 are rare. That one seems to be referring to the writer, but maybe that's just topic versus subject.

I still suspect one needs to say something that indicates that indicates that your observations match the the previous statement, and I still think the question is too abrupt.

Edited September 18, 2008 at 12:11 PM by davidj
Add a bit more research on usage on Google.

[Scoobyqueen]

Kan shang qu ( 看上去) is quite common to express how you look „look young, look tired, pretty etc”.

The speaker states he is tired, the other person then asks “you (also) look tired, what’s the matter?”. The sentence seems ok.

Edited September 19, 2008 at 09:56 AM by Scoobyqueen