When to use he(2) 和？

[Hikaroshi]

So this is my first year taking chinese, one of my issues is grammar (apparently I have great pronunciation)... In my class we're doing a unit on the family, one of the questions we had to write out told us to translate:

What do his parents do?

and I wrote 他爸爸和妈妈什么工作？But looking back at the answers, it excluded the 和. My question is, when do you use 和 because I thought it was used to compare two nouns..

Another similar question we had to write was:

Both his mother and father are teachers

I did the same thing, included 和 while the answer did not.

他妈妈和爸爸都是lu师 (lawyer) lushi (I couldn't find the character for lu)...

Can anyone please explain this?

[彭浩轩]

Chinese tends to be comfortable with listing a number of things without the need for the word "and" in between. For instance, it would be quite normal to say “我喜欢睡觉、游泳、喝酒。” ("I like to sleep, to swim, [and] to drink alcohol") without needing to put "和" in there anywhere. However, when making lists of more than three or so items, it's common to put "和" before the last item, as in “我吃面条、烤牛肉、酸辣汤和拌菜。” ("I ate noodles, BBQ Pork, Hot&Sour Soup, and salad"). In this latter case, however, "还有" is often used interchangeably with "和". In lists of two items, as in "mother and father", neither separator is necessary.

In your specific examples though, it seems that the exercise was looking for you to write parents, and not simply "mother and father". "Parents" can be expressed in Chinese as "爸爸妈妈" (as one word) as well as "父母". This is why "和" is not needed in your first example. In the second example, it is not necessary for the reason I first stated: lists of only two items do not require "and".

In a succinct answer to your question: "和" used in listing items is only necessary when the list is 3 items long or longer.

[edelweis]

[deleted]

don't know how I missed 彭浩轩's answer...

[semantic nuance]

他妈妈和爸爸都是lu师 (lawyer) lushi (I couldn't find the character for lu)...

他妈妈和爸爸都是律 师.

[creamyhorror]

他妈妈和爸爸都是lu师 (lawyer) lushi (I couldn't find the character for lu)...

To type characters with the ü sound, use "v". E.g. lvshi for 律师, nvren for 女人, etc.

他爸爸和妈妈什么工作？

This seems a bit wonky or very colloquial. I would say 他父母的职业是什么？ or 他爸爸妈妈是做什么工作的？