Group read! 《秘密花园》; "The Secret Garden" (300-ch. book). Discussing through Chapter 2!

[Marguerite]

All right, let's get this party started, or I will 又生气又哭!

 

My summary:

In chapter one of《秘密花园》, we're introduced to 李叶. 李叶 is a spoiled little girl from 海南, and I'll admit that my reactions to her were mixed. We're limited by vocabulary here, but she actually doesn't seem as bratty as I recall Mary Lennox being. She gets angry and cries a lot, so there are a lot of tantrums. However, if I knew my parents didn't want me, didn't like me, ignored me, and even the staff only put up with me because they had to, I'd probably be pretty nasty too. 

This goes on until she's about 10, when one day a new maid appears. This is highly traumatic, and 李叶 only wants her previous maid, so cue more 又生气又哭! She drives the new maid away, but the old maid can't come back, so 李叶 is left to her own devices. She overhears a conversation her mother has, who didn't know how bad "it" was. What's "it"? It's an outbreak of sickness! Everybody's dying or running away, still ignoring 李叶, until finally 李叶 wakes up one day and seems to be the only person in the house. A few people find her and confirm the bad news -- everybody's gone. Some people ran away, but many died, including 李叶's 爸爸妈妈. We close the chapter by reaffirming that 李叶 still has nobody who cares about her -- and now there's nobody who has to, either.

 

Vocabulary and Grammar, including my questions:

• Okay, it seems that 着 doesn't come up until a later chapter, but watch this space!
• 的: Dedicated thread. Appropriate for a basic book, let's start with the basic 的. We see it a lot in this chapter. It's used both a possessive (她的阿姨) and the marker of a descriptive phrase (起来的时候). In fact...
• 的时候: Dedicated thread. Seems to be the rough equivalent of "when", or "while". I find this one a little awkward still, personally, because I'm still reading character by character and not at a higher logical level. Something something something 的时候, oh, when what again? Go back and re-read. It makes sense to me as a construct, at least, so I hope this'll get better with practice.
• 出事: According to the back of the book, this is "accident". Pleco says the same, though expands it a little bit to "meet with a mishap; have an accident". Even knowing that, I find the uses a little confusing. I'm going to quote from the book here, and hope it's short enough to count as fair use. Send me a message if I need to edit.

  1. 她。。。。。。不知道为什么今天只有她一个人。一定出事了！

  2. [她妈妈]才知道真的出事了。

  I tend to read both of those as nouns, not verbs. She didn't know why she was the only person. Definitely an accident (or 'a mistake')! I take it should be more like "Something must have happened!"?

  Her mother just now knew how bad it really was. Her mother just learned ... what, a real accident / bad situation had happened? Or am I totally off?

• How to know what can be split, and when to do it. This may be more advanced. 出事 is actually 出+事 (V+O or just V1+V2?). 出了什么事？ 我没出过事。 时候 is a noun, I think, and can't be split. How do you learn what can split and what can't? All multi-character verbs can, but nouns can't? Or is it just something you memorize as you learn each new word?
• Writing tenses: In English, most books are written in the past tense (generally speaking). He said something, then he went on to investigate a murder. She had wanted to ignore him, so when she saw him she immediately turned a corner. I have a limited selection of French novels, but they seem to be split between present and past. (At least one of the present tense novels is written as a first-person POV recounting a story, so that has obviously influenced things.) What about Chinese? Is it read as present tense or past, generally? I would normally have expected more 了 if it were past, but that could be just because I am still so basic. This will then feed into my questions later about 着, with its multiple uses.

Writing practice:

我喜欢这本书。因为我不知道很多词，所以我不会看书很多书。我会看书这本！

李叶很不好，很不高兴的女孩子。 她的爸爸妈妈不喜欢她，也不真的关心她。然而她应该更好。

有一天，她家出事了。很多人都生病了，死了。她没有关心的人关心她。会发生什么？她可以留住在海南？她的新的《家》是谁？

[Marguerite]

PS. I talk a lot, but don't let that put you off!

PPS. For those who want to read the English-language original, it's available on Project Gutenberg, among other places: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/113

[lechuan]

Great idea for a topic!

出事：I think this can be more generally understood as "something (negative) is amiss/happening/wrong"

In regards to "tense", There's a good explanation here regarding expressing time: http://mandarin.about.com/od/time/a/Mandarin-Timeframes.htm

[lechuan]

A couple of word groups from Chapter 1 that I found useful:

看起来 kàn qǐlái: seemingly; (idiom) looks as if (based upon what is known so far)

从来没有 cónglái méiyǒu: have never; never before

[Ruben von Zwack]

Hello all!

 

As to which 300 words to learn - 看起来   that the first chapter, apart from two words (don't sue me if I'm wrong and it's not 2 but 3 words or maybe even just 1!), aunt, and to cry, is all within the vocabulary of HSK 2.

 

In case you want an HSK 1 + 2 vocabulary list, I recall that it seemed easy to find with English translation free on the web, and they are out there as shared Anki decks as well.
This page for example has everything even as beautiful graphs: http://www.hskhsk.com/ (cross check though - in the level 3 graph I noticed 2, 3 minor mistakes in words with multiple pronunciations)
There is also an an excel file that contains all vocabulary sorted by levels as sheets (Chinese-only, but who knows, you might find them useful - I did) see: http://www.chinesetest.cn/godownload.do - scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, and under "Others" there is the link:
新汉语水平考试（HSK）词汇（2012年修订版） that will open/download the Excel file. It's the Hanban website, the people who do the HSK.

 

 

How to know what can be split, and when to do it. This may be more advanced. 出事 is actually 出+事 (V+O or just V1+V2?).

I'm afraid I don't know either   -  but 事 shì should be a noun. I haven't heard anyone use the expressions you suggested (but that doesn't neccessarily mean anything).

Common phrases with 事 though are:
"你沒事把?" ("are you alright?") and "沒事" (answer to the previous question, like "I'm fine", or, in other contexts, used as a reply to a thank you or an apology, like "it's nothing/no problem").

 

加油!  (jiā yóu) 

[Marguerite]

I just grabbed the expressions from Pleco, because they were the first time I'd seen the split. I am guessing that they are at least grammatically correct, if not necessarily common. ;)

[lechuan]

There's a good entry on separable verbs here: http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Separable_verb

[Marguerite]

Ah, that's incredibly helpful, thank you. I can already see where I'll be spending part of my day.

[pprendeville]

这本书有一点儿奇怪。我没读过英文的秘密花园（其实我连没听过它）。我不知道李叶是谁，不知道到故事的内容。我一看这本书书就很高兴因为百分之95的汉子我都懂了。进步：） 好像这个姑娘没有姐妹也没有兄弟，他只是一个孩子。他每天没有朋友跟他玩儿*。除了他的阿姨没有人关心她。非常遗憾。他爸爸可能常常出差，很少在家里。妈妈不喜欢李叶，不太清楚为什么。世界上都的妈妈（语法错了-请帮我写对了）应该关心照顾他们的孩子，对吧？所以她的生活好容易。其实他妈妈不喜欢看她女儿，一看他就让她很生气。谁也不喜欢他们自己的女儿？我不知道谁的父母是最不好。爸爸还是妈妈。有一天李叶起床以后她发现他有一个新阿姨，老阿姨找不到了。这个让他很生气。 她生气的时候就哭了。过了一会儿我们知道新阿姨没回来。没有人照顾李叶。难怪他很瘦也很黄。一天她睡了很久，起床以后没有人找他。他们都死了。一定生病真厉害。

I'm note great at writing in Chinese so please point out all the mistakes. Book is ok so far. Nothing overly exciting happening. Poor girl seems to have a hard time. Illustrations are beautiful. Have read the 1st two chapters and am analysing them for grammar structures and useful phrases.

[Marguerite]

Great post, pprendeville! About the only thing I noticed is a few 他 when I think it's probably supposed to be 她. I'm hardly the one to be correcting anyone else, though.

As for her parents, especially her mother, I think it's a combination of things. Mama is spoiled herself, and enjoys being the social butterfly, and feels that she can't do that with a child. She also has absolutely no idea what to do with a child, and ignores (or has taken away) any difficulties. A cranky girl would definitely fit in that category! (Papa does something similar by being gone so much, I think, though that'd be justified by it being his job.) Finally, if you guess it was originally set around 1900-1910 (when FHB was writing), I think there was a more general sense of 'children should be seen and not heard.' Taking that to an extreme would be a really quick way of showing the parents' neglect and 李叶's isolation.

[lechuan]

Here's the complete vocab for chapter 1 in case anyone wants to make flashcards:

 

Moved vocab into a .txt file to save everyone's scrolling fingers...Roddy

SGchap1.txt

[footbye]

Hello, I am a Chinese. Do you need my help?

[footbye]

这本书有一点儿奇怪。我没读过英文的秘密花园（其实我连没听过它）。我不知道李叶是谁，不知道到故事的内容。我一看这本书书就很高兴因为百分之95的汉子我都懂了。进步：） 好像这个姑娘没有姐妹也没有兄弟，他只是一个孩子。他每天没有朋友跟他玩儿*。除了他的阿姨没有人关心她。非常遗憾。他爸爸可能常常出差，很少在家里。妈妈不喜欢李叶，不太清楚为什么。世界上都的妈妈（语法错了-请帮我写对了）应该关心照顾他们的孩子，对吧？所以她的生活好容易。其实他妈妈不喜欢看她女儿，一看他就让她很生气。谁也不喜欢他们自己的女儿？我不知道谁的父母是最不好。爸爸还是妈妈。有一天李叶起床以后她发现他有一个新阿姨，老阿姨找不到了。这个让他很生气。 她生气的时候就哭了。过了一会儿我们知道新阿姨没回来。没有人照顾李叶。难怪他很瘦也很黄。一天她睡了很久，起床以后没有人找他。他们都死了。一定生病真厉害。

I'm note great at writing in Chinese so please point out all the mistakes. Book is ok so far. Nothing overly exciting happening. Poor girl seems to have a hard time. Illustrations are beautiful. Have read the 1st two chapters and am analysing them for grammar structures and useful phrases.

pls check the following that I wrote on the basis of yours. Word for word. You will catch the mistakes.

这本书有一点儿奇怪。我没读过英文的秘密花园（其实我连听过都没有）。我不知道李叶是谁，也不知道故事的梗概。我一看这本书就很高兴，因为百分之95的汉字我都认识。进步：） 好像这个姑娘没有兄弟姐妹，她是一个独生女。每天她都没有朋友一起玩儿。除了她的阿姨没有人关心她。非常遗憾。她爸爸可能常常出差，很少在家。她妈妈不喜欢她，不太清楚为什么。世界上所有的妈妈都（语法错了-请帮我写对了）应该关心照顾她们的孩子，不是吗？所以她的生活很不容易。其实她妈妈不喜欢李叶，甚至一看到她就很生气。作为母亲，谁不喜欢自己的女儿呢？我不知道谁的父母能对孩子这么不好。有一天李叶起床以后发现她有一个新阿姨，老阿姨找不到了。这个让她很生气。 她生气的时候就哭了。过了一会儿我们知道新阿姨没回来。没有人照顾李叶。难怪她很瘦很黄。这一天她睡了很久，起床以后也没有人找她。他们都死了。李叶生病了，可能病的很厉害。

In general, there is no difficulty for me to understand the paragraph. Good for you. Practice makes perfect. Believe in yourself. Contact me if you have any questions. My email, wgh2013@gmail.com

PS: I am a Chinese.

[sinosplice]

By the way guys, we're adding special pages to the AllSet Learning Chinese Grammar Wiki just for grammar points in Mandarin Companion books.  Right now we're only listing first appearances of A2 and B1 grammar patterns (and there are a lot!).  This could probably be done better (we're open to suggestions!), but here's what we've got so far:

 

http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Reference:Mandarin_Companion_Chinese_Graded_Readers

[roddy]

For Marguerite, all the way up at the top of the page

 

Now you've read up on separable verbs, do you want to have another shot at writing "所以我不会看书很多书。" And what were you trying to say with 她没有关心的人关心她。?

[Marguerite]

Well, they say third time's the charm, and this is only the second try, so let's fail again! (I'm going to "show my work", so that everyone can see where I go wrong.)

Originally:

所以我不会看书很多书

看书 is itself a "VO" verb construction, so...

所以我不会看很多书 ?

(Because I don't know many words,) [so] I cannot* read many books.

*"Am incapable of", not "am not allowed to".

Originally:

她没有关心的人关心她。

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure. I think I was trying to say that she doesn't have (any longer, anymore) any caring person to take care of her, reusing 关心 from the book.

她没有 X, where X is 'people who care about her'.

We just went over using 的 for 'who/that' constructs, so 'people who Y' is 'Y 的人'.

'Care about her' is '关心她'.

Roll that backwards, and you get '关心她的人'.

Put it all together and it's 她没(或者'不再'）有关心她的人。

[roddy]

Good stuff!

[footbye]

To put it simpler, "她没有关心的人关心她" should be simplified as "没有人关心她＂or＂没有人给她关心＂，both of which are easier to be understood by Chinese.

[roddy]

Footbye, welcome to the site ,but please don't quote entire posts. It makes our scrolling fingers tired. 

[footbye]

Thanks for ur welcome. I will improve my post skills then.