What is the meaning of ke3 in this sentence?

[piano0011]

In the following sentence..... zhe4 ji3 tian1 ke3 xia4 yu3 = it has been raining a lot these past few days.... what is the meaning of ke3 here? does it mean ke3yi3? = can?

[cncorrect]

I think ke3 here is used as an adverb, meaning very. For example, '劲头可大啦！'

[piano0011]

So in this sentence, ke3 is similar to using hen3? is ke3 colloquially used as much as hen3?

[abcdefg]

On 1/21/2024 at 1:21 AM, piano0011 said:

So in this sentence, ke3 is similar to using hen3? 

 

Yes, it is similar but not identical. 

 

On 1/21/2024 at 1:21 AM, piano0011 said:

Is ke3 colloquially used as much as hen3?

 

No, not as much. I hear ke 可 used more often when the speaker wants to express emphasis. 

 

Hen 很 as in 很好 is very bland in everyday speech. Not emphatic at all. 

 

On 1/20/2024 at 8:37 PM, piano0011 said:

does it mean ke3yi3? = can?

 

No. It does not mean that at all. 

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Additional thought: You need a tutor or teacher in the worst way. Getting random help from internet strangers on a single phrase or mystery word here and there, piecemeal, in fragments, is extremely inefficient and can lead to errors, can lead to confusion. It is a very scattered and disorderly approach. Maybe it's better than nothing, but if so, just barely. 

 

 

[Lu]

On 1/21/2024 at 3:17 PM, abcdefg said:

You need a tutor or teacher in the worst way.

I strongly agree. A qualified tutor can organise and streamline your learning, explain differences between related things, answer lots of questions and more. Do consider getting one, @piano0011, either in person or online.

[cncorrect]

On 1/21/2024 at 3:21 PM, piano0011 said:

So in this sentence, ke3 is similar to using hen3?

I have heard few people use '这几天可下雨' to express that it has been raining a lot these past few days. But I've never heard of '这几天很下雨'.

 

On 1/21/2024 at 3:21 PM, piano0011 said:

is ke3 colloquially used as much as hen3?

Yes, sometimes, for example, '很好吃=可好吃了，很漂亮=可漂亮了，雪很大=雪可大了'. 

[piano0011]

@lulu I am watching lessons from peking university and am using the dictionary at the moment but still needs confirmation whether the usage is correct or not...

 

@cncorrect This is strange because hen3 is more commonly used correct? it should sound correct in saying... zhe ji tian xia hen duo yu.... 

I mean this sentence..

[Lu]

On 1/22/2024 at 6:55 AM, piano0011 said:

I am watching lessons from peking university and am using the dictionary at the moment

Very good that you're using a dictionary!

Now, you need a teacher, someone who explains things to you and then lets you ask questions and practice. Just watching pre-taped videos is not enough.

 

I don't know why you're tagging lulu, that member hasn't been online since 2004, so it's unlikely lulu will ever see this.

[honglam]

In fact in certain dialects like Jianghuai Mandarin江淮官话(Happens to be my mother tongue), the structure 可 + Predicate has the same meaning of Predicate + 吗(that is to say, asking whether something is true or not). Like “这个事你可晓得？Do you know this?” So a sentence like "今天可下雨了？" means "Has it rained today?"

The grammar mentioned above is directly inherited from the Mandarin several centuries ago, and can be found in some Mandarin text with history.

Meanwhile 可 has a sense of contrast, and should be understood with the adjacent sentence. eg. 昨天没下雨，今天可下雨了。It didn't rained yesterday, but it's raining today. Here 可 play the role as “but”.

as for showing the degree is very high(mentioned by previous followers), I don't think this explanation could be utilized with a verb like 下雨. Or It could be a usage of dialect perhaps since I do hear some of my friends say that(btw we are from different parts of China.)

Or you may paste a url of the course here so that we can see what the sentence means in the certain context.

[mikelove]

@piano0011, while your curiosity about Chinese is appreciated, please try not to start so many threads, since you're kind of taking over the front page here.

 

There are enough replies to your existing threads that it would be a bit unwieldy to consolidate them all to a single one, so I'm not going to do that at the moment, but if you'd maybe consolidate your questions to a single thread going forward (start a new generic one with 'chinese grammar questions' or whatever), I expect that will work a lot better for everyone; each question will still show up as a new post, so people will still be able to respond to you if they like.

[piano0011]

@mikelove apologies here and will try to keep 1 main thread for asking these questions... maybe I should call it? "what does this mean" as a main header?

[Moshen]

Quote

Now, you need a teacher, someone who explains things to you and then lets you ask questions and practice. Just watching pre-taped videos is not enough.

 

I agree!  Asking questions is good when there is something you don't understand in a lesson.  But it doesn't make sense to get way ahead of where you are in your studies.  Accordingly, there are good questions, and there are others that don't make much difference at a certain level of study.

 

For instance, if someone is just starting to study English, it wouldn't be helpful to ask about the differences between "can not," "cannot" and "can't."  It should be enough to know that they're pretty much equivalent and interchangeable, and to leave learning the nuances until much later.

 

Likewise, if you're just learning to say "fork" and "spoon" in a new language, it's not the time yet to learn the difference between "dinner fork" and "salad fork."

 

That's my opinion based on having studied six languages - including English, where I continue to consult the dictionary on a daily basis.

 

[piano0011]

@Moshen You are being sarcastic now.... those are obviously very subtle meaning but what i am asking here are differences in vocabularies.. like what is the difference between big and hugh.... many or alot.... lol so immature

[suMMit]

It's difficult to understand how you are following a beginner /elementary course, you learn about 最近 and 这几天 and have all these questions about "the difference", and 再见 and 告别 and on and on. Did they not demonstrate the difference? Or maybe they are not teaching you both, because you don't need both yet. Probably understanding 最近 is enough for now. I've studied Chinese 5 years and live in China and I've not yet come across 告别（I see it's hsk5 and I'll probably see it soon).  But you post your umpteenth "what's the difference" question and it seems like you've done absolutely no research on your own, you've learned nothing about it from your course, then someone answers you and you persist in telling them "No, I still think it's the same". Sure we all get stuck on points that we can't seem to get, but we don't create a post about the difference between every single synonym. All these posts end up looking like spam or some kind of elaborate troll. 

 

*And, someone has explained to you how to type with characters, but you don't bother with it. 

 

可烦人。

[piano0011]

They teach very well but I am doing some further learning with a dictionary and so don't understand the differences between the new words... trying to increase my vocabularies... I have installed the program but it doesn't work! It doesn't highlighted the words into chinese like what the other person told me to do......

[Lu]

Moderator note: it's fine to disagree with people's learning methods, but do not make fun of anyone please. Also, no rape threats, and I can't believe I have to say this.

[piano0011]

@Lu apologies about that but yeah, the comments received by that person was not helpful... anyway, can you merge all my questions into a single category then? maybe called it.... What is the difference? In the meantime, i will create another category called what is the difference....