I am having a little trouble

[guest1234]

Hi

 

Sorry for this but I am having problems with an easy sentence .

 

I missed a new years party and want to say the following

 

"I wish I had been there, I miss my teacher, my classmates and Beijing very much"

 

 

我希望我在那里。我想念我的老师，我的同学和北京非常

 

This is what I have but I am not happy with it, I think I think I am missing the tense ( had been there ) and I am not sure about the very much at the end either.

 

 

Any help would be great.

 

sorry for my inabilities

 

Phil

[Demonic_Duck]

I miss X very much = 我非常想念X, not 我想念X非常. (Same goes for verbs such as 喜欢、爱 etc.)

 

I'm not entirely sure about how to translate wishes for the past into Chinese. I'd personally go with 我希望我去过, but I'm not sure that expresses the idea correctly.

[戴 睿]

Expressing "I wish I had..." Is different in Chinese. A better way to say it would be:

"我很遗憾我不能过去，我能过去的话就好了。我非常想念北京，我的老师，和我的同学们。”

The direct translate is more like: I really regret I couldn't go, I would have loved being there. I really miss beijing, my teacher, and my classmates.

I know I changed the order to putting beijing first, but to be honest in Chinese it felt very strange to me to have it last in the list. Chinese people equate a sort of abstract size value to things, and it influences their sentence structure. Nouns are generally listed from big and of significant importance to small and of little importance, so beijing needed to come first, then the teacher, and finally the student.

[guest1234]

Thanks for that, that makes more sense.Its not as easy as some people make it look ,this Chinese. is it.

[Nathan Mao]

#3's is excellent.  Or, at least, I was thinking the same way! ;)

 

Just to give you another, similar take, I would have said:

 

"我非常遗憾我没去参加(那个)春节的晚会！我特别想念北京，我的老师， 我的同学们！“

or

我很遗憾今年没办法回中国去过年！我多么想念北京，我的老师，我的同学们！”

 

of course, I might have some grammatical errors, but that's pretty close.

 

The past tense really isn't that necessary, because the context of your words makes it obvious that you regret an opportunity that is already past.

 

If you really had an opportunity to go but missed out, you could emphasize that by saying:

 

我很不高兴我错过今年的过年的活动（or: 热闹）； 我非常....

 

But I fully agree that Chinese culture tends to go from big to small, and most respect to lesser respect, so 北京 would come before 老师 which would come before fellow students.

[mandarina]

And here's my take:

我很遗憾没有机会去参加我们的晚会。我很想念我们的老师，很想念我的同学们，也很想念北京。

[imron]

If this is your bagua classmates, then consider 师兄弟 instead of 同学们。

[guest1234]

thanks for everyone's help. I just need to study harder as I would never have got anyway near the examples that have been given here.

 

thanks

[戴 睿]

Don't apologize for your "inabilities." The only person you need to be held accountable to is yourself. I wish you the best of luck in your future studies, and hope you regard your deficiencies as opportunities to improve, not as weaknesses.