一百个酸奶 what's she really mean?

[Kelby]

So, my girlfriend (a lovely Manchu girl from Zhengzhou) has a thing for yogurt. One day I bought her a yogurt and after drinking it she said :

＂爽！老公，给我买一百个吧！＂

Now, as the dork I am every time afterward I would jokingly tell her how many yogurts she had left. She'd always chuckle about the fact that I was keeping track.

I suddenly realized that while 百 means 100, it also sometime means "many," e.g. 百脚 for centipede or 百货 for general goods.

Now here's the question: is she saying she wants 100 yogurts, or does she just mean she wants a bunch of yogurt?

Personally, I guess it could go either way.

[Demonic_Duck]

Sounds a fairly simple case of non-literal literal meaning here. In theory, 一百个酸奶 should mean exactly 100 yoghurts (I don't think there's anything ambiguous about 一百个, and I don't think it's analogous to 百货 or anything). However, she clearly wasn't saying she actually wanted 100 yoghurts, as she was just pulling your leg. Compare it to the Proclaimers song "I would walk 500 miles". Clearly, 500 miles is 500 miles, not 400 or 600. But equally clearly, the song doesn't mean they will literally walk 500 (or 1000) miles.

This thread about ambiguity seems ambiguous as to whether it's a joke thread, and as such I'm providing an answer that's ambiguous as to whether it's a joke answer.

[Geray]

I am sure to tell you that , she wants a bunch of yogurt. For example , "爱你一万年", which can be translated to " love you for 10,000 years", it means love you for a very very long time.

[Glenn]

Why wouldn't 百 in 百腳 mean "100"? "Centipede" means "100 feet" literally. Incidentally, that doesn't appear to be the word for "centipede", at least not according to Wikipedia:

http://zh.wikipedia....dia.org/wiki/蜈蚣

It totally makes sense, though.

[imron]

"Centipede" means "100 feet" literally

It literally means 100 feet, however that doesn't literally mean that centipedes have 100 feet. The 'centi' in centipede essentially means 'many'.

[Glenn]

Well, damn my dearth of knowledge of Chilopoda morphology. I thought they had 100 legs.

[imron]

According to wikipedia, it can range anywhere from under 20 to over 300.

[Kelby]

It had never occurred to me that this was such a cross-cultural thing. In my personal case, I assumed that there was the double meaning, which is exactly what made the situation fun in the first place.

[Glenn]

Yes, it's enjoyable seeing how different cultures approach naming the same things sometimes.

According to wikipedia, it can range anywhere from under 20 to over 300.

Yes, after you posted your original response to me, I checked, and that's where I saw that they don't all have 100.

[sleepypillow]

On the first point, you're right. Sometimes “百” means "many", like “百无一用” “百姓” “百感交集”。

This kind of usage also works on “三” “五” “九” or other numbers in Chinese, like “三番五次” “九牛一毛” “五光十色”...In this situation, these numerals are a kind of exaggeration to emphasize that "there are many" "a large quantity". “飞流直下三千尺“（From the poem 《望庐山瀑布》 by 李白）Actually “三千” doesn't mean the waterfall is literally 3000 CHIs high. It implys the waterfall is extremly high, of which magnificence is just beyond imaginary.

I think this kind of usage appears in English, too. Like "It's been ages." "I haven't been to a bookstore in a million years."

Oh, I hope I've made myself clear.

On the second point...Maybe she wants 100 yogurts, or more yogurts. Or she was just showing that she loves yogurts.

Well, there are all kinds of people out there. Some are straightforward, some are implicit, some make you think "I don't understand what they're talking about."

[耳耳语语]

Maybe some of the exotic opacity of China comes from the fact that for a western mind, a locution is whether litteral whether metaphorical ;

whether material whether ideal. It's not at ease when confronted with this kind of "limited hyperbol", or "ideal that you can count".

I like this China of radical alterity, where the Dao can't be named and where girls want precisely 100 yogurts.

[seesaw]

There is a difference between characters (字) and words (词) in Chinese.

A word consists of one or more characters, and its meaning is usally very specific. It usually just has one meaning.

One the other hand, a character usually has multiple meanings.

Take this sentence for example.

我要三个苹果。

It consists of 5 words:

我, 要, 三, 个, and 苹果

三 is a word here, which means exactly "three".

While for the below setence:

他老公三番五次出轨。

It consists of 4 words:

他, 老公, 三番五次, and 出轨.

三 is not a word here, while 三番五次 is, which means "many times"

三 as a character, as well as the character 五, means "many" in the word 三番五次.

As a word, 三 means only "three". But when it is used as a character in another word, it can also means "many".

Practically, only the meaning of a word matters.

The (wider) range of meanings of a character is only useful in understanding why the word is coined so.