谁让……

[murrayjames]

What does 谁让 mean, as in 谁让你感冒了？

I thought my friend was asking who made me sick. She corrected me: 不是。谁让.....是一个句型

So 谁让 is a sentence pattern. What does it mean?

[semantic nuance]

I think it is 'who made you sick'. I don't know if whether 誰讓.... is a pattern or not. 讓 is similar to 使, or 給 , or 叫 in different contexts. So I think you gathered it all right.

[skylee]

But sometimes it is not.

It could mean that something regrettable/undesirable has happened because you were sick. And you sickness was to blame for what happened. For example, you have missed the chance to take part in a competition. The competition was there but you were absent because you had a flu. So your friend said to you, 誰讓你感冒了呢?(可惜是可惜，但是沒辦法啊。)

[daofeishi]

As I understand it, this 谁让你感冒了 is sort of like jokingly saying "who told you you were allowed to catch a cold?", or, "who gave you permission to be sick?"

[murrayjames]

skylee -- yes, that's it.

I was complaining about an awful medicinal tea I was drinking. Then she said 谁让你感冒了？The cold was to blame for me drinking this awful tea.

[creamyhorror]

It could mean that something regrettable/undesirable has happened because you were sick. And you sickness was to blame for what happened.

Hmm, I thought only 叫 (as in "谁叫你感冒") was used for that. So 让 works too...

As we say in Singlish, "Who ask you to get sick?" (a literal translation from the Chinese) B)

[semantic nuance]

I read it literally at the first time. Is it used mainly in Mainland China? In Taiwan, we often say, in that case, 誰叫你感冒呀! or 誰要你感冒呀!

[renzhe]

The phrase, in this context, implies that it's your own fault and if you hadn't done X, you wouldn't be suffering from Y now. Like "You've made your bed and you'll have to lie in it"

Of course, in the case of getting ill, it's probably tongue-in-cheek because nobody gets ill on purpose, but the implication is that you shouldn't have caught a cold in the first place.

[semantic nuance]

By the way, 誰讓你感冒了? could also mean 誰讓你看不順眼了啊? (Who pissed you off?)

[daofeishi]

[...] but the implication is that you shouldn't have caught a cold in the first place.

Yeah, that is what I tried to get across with my translation above. When trying to think back to the situations in which I have heard this construct, it seems that 谁让你[...] is used in the same way as "who told you you could [...]". (Isn't it?) It can either be used jokingly or as an expression of aggravation.

For example:

谁让你做的？！

Who told you you could do that?!

这是谁让你买的？！

Who told you you could buy that?!

谁让你这么晚才回来的？

"Who told you you could come back this late"　＝ Why are you coming back this late?

[semantic nuance]

But isn't there a very minute difference when one says '誰讓你哭了' and '誰讓你哭的'? I mean when you use 了 and 的, the meaning will be slightly different, isn't it? Besides, 誰讓你做的? could also mean 'who made you do it?' .

[daofeishi]

Hmmmm... I the more I think about it, the less I become sure about the way the phrase is used.

谁让你做的 could definitely mean "who made you do that". My translation above was intended to be functional and not grammatical. Grammatically speaking, I guess the phrase is better translated as "who let you do that," and how it comes off is very context-dependent.

The difference between 的 and 了 here is something my ears aren't attuned to. 谁让你哭了 sounds like "who made you cry” to me, with the intension of perhaps consoling someone who is crying. “谁让你哭的" doesn't sound good to me. I'm confused myself. Perhaps some of our native speakers could shed some light on this?

[creamyhorror]

semantic nuance is a native speaker, I believe.

BTW, let's not mix up the two usages of 让 we're seeing here. One is "let/make", the other is equivalent to the "who asked you to" usage of 叫. For example:

谁让你这么晚才回来的？ = Who let/made you come back this late?

谁让(=叫)你这么晚才回来？ = It's your own fault for coming back this late. (used after the late returner has complained about something)

Personally I would only use 叫 in the second sentence, and I think the same goes for semantic nuance.

[daofeishi]

With this many native speakers here, I'm really 班门弄斧-ing. :unsure: I guess I'll have to play the question back to semantic nuance, then. What is the difference in usage between 谁让你哭的 and 谁让你哭了？

[Jane_PA]

谁让 something means something like "it is pity that you got something bad... but we could not help".

谁让你感冒了？ could mean this way: No person make you get a cold, but it is pity that you got a cold. We could not help.

Usually the something here is a bad thing like，（下雨你被淋湿了）谁让你没带雨伞了？

（车子坏了）谁让你不去定期检查车子了。

（作业没有做完）谁让你周末去玩了。

[semantic nuance]

semantic nuance is a native speaker, I believe.

Even native speakers of Chinese are very likely to make mistakes. So, don't count on entirely on the native speakers. I sometimes make mistakes.

BTW, let's not mix up the two usages of 让 we're seeing here. One is "let/make", the other is equivalent to the "who asked you to" usage of 叫.

Yes, that's what I said earlier,

讓 is similar to 使, or 給 , or 叫 in different contexts.

The OP didn't give us a concrete context, he/she just posted a sentence, telling us that his/her friend said it's not what he/she meant. But when I first read the sentence, I read it as someone who might have been infected by someone else, so the one who was talked to asked:( 是)誰讓你感冒了?

Then after the other memebers indicated the different usages, I replied in that case, we often use 誰叫你....or 誰要你....in that case.

'誰讓你哭了' and '誰讓你哭的'? I mean when you use 了 and 的, the meaning will be slightly different,]

My mistake, sorry. I jumped to conclusion when I was thinking differently with 2 sentences in different meanings respectively. So, if 誰讓你哭了 and 誰讓你哭的 mean the same, then 了 and 的 make no differences.

[abcdefg]

By the way, 誰讓你感冒了? could also mean 誰讓你看不順眼了啊? (Who pissed you off?)

Pretty sure I've heard it used that way in Kunming. It's slang. But I cannot find an authoritative reference. (I could easily be wrong.)

谁让你感冒了？= Who pissed you off?

[skylee]

我對iphone 不感冒 = 我對iphone 沒興趣/不着迷.

[abcdefg]

我對iphone 不感冒 = 我對iphone 沒興趣/不着迷.

Now that use sounds familiar too. Where in the world does one turn for a dictionary of Chinese slang?

Edit: I found one here -- http://www.chinese-tools.com/chinese/slang

They agree with @skylee on 感冒。

感冒gǎn mào

be interested in; have interest in

她喜欢言情片，对恐怖片不感冒。

She is fond of romantic movies and is not interested in horror movies.

I'm not sure how that fits with the original sentence, which was: 谁让你感冒了？

[semantic nuance]

感冒 as a slang is differently used in Mainland China and Taiwan. In Mainland China, 感冒, as skylee has indicated, is interested in something /someone, while in Taiwan, the meaning is totally the reverse: it means someone is annoyed by something /someone.

Ex: 他真是令人感冒耶! =他真是令人討厭耶! He's pretty annoying!

兩岸對「感冒」的解釋也不一樣。在大陸，討厭一個人，要說「我對此人不感冒」；而台灣的用法完全相反。「可愛」在大陸帶有幼稚的意思；在台灣，可愛是非常普遍，跨年齡、跨性別的正面稱讚。

quoted from 兩岸同詞異義的文

Hope it helps!