"In Chinese"

[ralphmat123]

Hi. I was wondering how to say "in Chinese" as in if you want to say "I don't know how to say that in Chinese" or "I don't know this word in Chinese" or if someone asks you a question and you want to ask "in Chinese?" To ask if they want you to respond in Chinese or English etc.

I learnt that to say "how so you say .... In Chinese?" Is "...用中文怎么说"

So is "in Chinese" "用中文” ? Literally "using Chinese"

Thanks!

[Guest realmayo]

Yes. To my ears dropping the 用 and putting the 'english' at the end, not the start, sounds a bit nicer but I could be wrong (i.e. "中文怎么说.....").

[shuoshuo]

As far as I know, "用中文怎么说" is correct. When I speak to Chinese, and they are trying to speak to me in English they often say "怎么说" whenever they can't seem to say whatever they want to say in English.

 

I don't think "中文怎么说" is correct.  That sounds more like 'how do you say Chinese' as opposed to 'how would you say that in Chinese'. A Chinese corrected me on this one, because that was exactly what I had said. 

[skylee]

I don't think "中文怎么说" is correct.

I wouldn't say it is incorrect. I can imagine myself asking questions like "Placard中文怎麼說？“ or "Referendum 中文怎麼說？“ etc.

[Divato]

You could say blah blah blah(的/用)(中文/普通话)怎么说 to explain how to say that in (Chinese/Mandarin)

[shuoshuo]

Skylee - That's how I used to say it until a Chinese corrected me, in a rather embarrassing manner.  Since then, I've stopped talking like that and just try to make do with whatever it is I can come up with.

[OneEye]

Well, now a Chinese person (skylee) is saying it's not incorrect. It's quite possible that the first one was being overly pedantic and a bit of a prick. Kind of like those people who incessantly correct others' grammar online, even though they don't usually (ever?) have any grasp of what grammar really is and what constitutes acceptability in a language.

 

For the record, the criterion for acceptability is "do native speakers generally use it and accept it from other native speakers," not "do textbooks for foreigners teach it" or "are the grammar police OK with it." I've been told not to say certain things simply because "it sounds weird hearing that from a foreigner's mouth," meaning I was being too authentic for that person's taste. I'm not going to purposefully make my speech more foreign to suit how one person prefers his foreigners.

 

Mimic, mimic, mimic. Listen to what people actually say and imitate that. Pay less attention to what they say you should say, especially if it's in direct contradiction with what people actually say.

[shuoshuo]

I'm just sharing my experience as a non-native Chinese speaker, when I used what realmayo suggested. Perhaps I can't pull it off, and other foreigners can. The person who corrected me was actually a language partner, so I guess he had every right to let me know if I said something that didn't sound quite right. I didn't know what an English word meant in Chinese, so I said "[English word]  中文怎么说." It looked as though I almost gave him a stroke, that's how terrible of a mistake it seemed.

 

That said, I don't like to speak the kind of Mandarin that Chinese can 'sort-of' understand.  If a Chinese points it out as a mistake, I would rather not repeat it, even if another native-Chinese speaker wouldn't consider it wrong.  It can be very confusing to me though. I mean, after all...where else did I learn how to say that? I've heard other people saying it and I simply repeated it.

 

Native speakers are very forgiving (almost 'blind') when they speak to other native speakers.  There is a certain acceptable colloquialism among native-speakers, that non-native speakers cannot pull off.

 

That said, if "什么什么...中文怎么说" means exactly the same as "什么什么...用中文怎么说", then I have nothing left to say here. It's up to the OP if he wants to say it in whichever way he/she chooses.

[oceancalligraphy]

If you said "[in English]（用）中文怎麼說", I would understand it. "[in English]的[普通話/國語]是什麼" also works.

If you want the response that I've heard, it would be that we don't "說" 中文. 中文 is written Chinese, as in the characters. 文 means writing. Spoken Chinese is either 普通話 or 國語 (or other dialect).

To me, by saying 說, it's obviously refering to the speech, and by saying 中文, it's specifying in which language, so 說中文 is ok. But I wonder if my knowlege of English is influencing that interpretation. In Taiwanese, I only use 中文 to refer to the written word; I would specify a dialect (語) if I wanted to know how to say something. "[in English]的中文怎麼說" in Taiwanese does not sound right.

[tooironic]

I have heard native speakers of Chinese say （word）中文怎么说 and 说中文... many, many times. I can't help but feel some of the contributors here are being pedantic.

By the way, "in Chinese" can also be expressed as 在汉语中, but proper usage will depend on context.