The meaning of 把...弄得

[dreamon]

Excuse me for such a total beginner's question, but what does "把...弄得" mean? In my notes, after an intensive tutored session of deciphering Jenny's ChinesePod commentary, there is a vocabulary item that says: "nòng de: (make it) become". I tried to match it to dictionaries, but got increasingly confused. BTW, the meaning of "弄得" that pops up in Google Translate is precisely that: "Confused". Character "弄" has meanings such as "get, make, do, fetch, play with, fool with, mess with, engage in, manage" etc. I figured that it has to be used with "把", but again, I am getting all sorts of translations. Some examples from Google Translate:

把我弄得 That I got

把你弄得 You confused

把他弄得 Get him too

I begin to feel that it's a magic spell and it summons me... Please help...

[skylee]

Your note is right.

把房子弄得漂漂亮亮 = make the house look beautiful ~ beautify the place

把事情弄明白 = make things clear ~ clarify things

把他弄得慾火焚身 = make him feel horny

把她弄得一頭霧水 = make her feel confused ~ confuse her

[daofeishi]

what does "把...弄得" mean?

That is not a complete phrase. 把X弄得Y means, roughly, to "take X and make it Y" or "to make X Y". 弄 carries the meaning of to make or to do, and 得 indicates that a complement will follow 弄.

把房间弄得很脏 = "take the room and make it dirty" = make the room dirty

把我弄得很郁闷 = "take me and make me depressed" = make me depressed

把它弄得漂亮 = "take it and make it pretty" = make it pretty

[dreamon]

Thank you, skylee and daofeishi! I tried to add stuff before and after "把...弄得", but could not make out how it works, using Google alone.

[JonBI]

Nong means something like do by an undisclosed method, so it functions kind of like zuo, but the de at the end implies an obtained result - so it merges something like did by undisclosed means and achieved this result.

[Chinadoog]

你把这件事情弄得一塌糊涂

一塌糊涂 is a really useful chengyu

[wombat_tail]

actually, I think the meaning of 把。。弄得 is turn sth/some body into (some certain situation)

so the translation of the phrase should be

把我弄得 make me

把你弄得 make you

把他弄得 make him

for further examples

the rain make me upset.=这场雨把我弄得沮丧（不舒服）

usually，we use this phrase in oral speaking.

if you have any other question, plz text me.

hope can help~

[dreamon]

Thank you all very much, your comments advance me weeks ahead in one move! I am really overjoyed today, because I went to a used bookstore and bumped into the following book, with an unopened mp3-CD, all for just 8 dollars:

Rongrong Liao, David Dai, Jack Franke. Streetwise Mandarin Chinese. McGraw-Hill, October 2008, Paperback: 224 pages.

Thus worked the magic of the spell! The book has no pinyin and is a bit above my head for the moment, but with the OCR-enabled Pleco device and in a few more months, it has every chance to become an indispensable textbook and vocabulary source.

[abcdefg]

Excuse me for such a total beginner's question, but what does "把...弄得" mean?

It's not a total beginner question and I wonder if some of the difficulty here stems from (not) understanding or remembering how 把句子 "ba sentences" work instead of just from unclear meaning of the content word 弄 "nong." This review might help: http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Grammar%20exercises/Ba.htm.

(Let me hasten to add that this is from a guy who absolutely hates learning grammar, so don't swallow my suggestion uncritically.)