Chinese Grammar - 'literal' translations

[aussben]

Hi All,

I have numerous study aides on learning Cantonese/Mandarin. But one thing I find consistently annoying is when learning pinyin, they translate it into grammatically correct English. This does not help understand the Chinese logic and how to form a sentence. I basically have to remember phrases but I find it hard to start a conversation because I don't know how to apply the chinese.

For example, translated to English something could say:

What is your name.

But the Chinese will order it differently i.e

Name what is, or go where would be where go.

This makes it difficult to understand the chinese sentence structure, which makes it hard to form a sentence because I am thinking in English.

My questions is:

Does anyone know if there are study aides out there that remain true to the chinese grammar when translating into English?

[Xiwang]

You may want to try "A Study Tour for Learners of Chinese" by Dr. Andrew Lynn. It is published by BLCU Press: http://www.blcup.com/en/list_1.asp?id=881

In the first 40% of the book, every sample Chinese sentence is written in pinyin and hanzi. However, each such sentence is then also translated into both literal English and normal English. For example, here is the text for a sample sentence from page 91:

Nǐ kàn zhèxiē zěnmeyàng?

You look these how about?

What do you think of these?

你看这些怎么样?

[roddy]

Scurfield's Teach Yourself Chinese does the same in the early chapters.

[aussben]

Thanks a lot for the quick response that is exactly what I want.

[querido]

I agree with aussben.

Here is a thread on "Chinese ordered English"

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/9923-chinese-ordered-english

It seems very natural to me, and also very effective at exposing the Chinese ordering.

[aussben]

I totally agree querido, it makes it so hard to learn the corresponding chinese words unless I know what they are, if they re-order the English to be grammatically correct how do I know the corresponding word, also I need to understand the logic to learn the language.

It would be like trying to learn numbers without knowing the formula you would have to learn millions of numbers and memorize them, but once you know 1-10 you can then continue on with 11.

I read the post in the link you sent interesting read, I did not know there was a Wiki article on it.

Thanks again, I have ordered the books, also found one in a book shop in HK.