The general "you"

[Desmond]

Today I wanted to tell somebody "if you want to..." using our infamous general "you" (like the example in the title of this thread", but I'm not sure how you would say this in Chinese.

Examples to help you understand:

"if you want to go to the store, you have to take a right" (in the sense that "if one wants to go to the store, then one has to take a right")

"if you want to study Chinese, you have to start from the beginning" (if a person wants to study Chinese, they have to start from the beginning)

Naturally I want to say 如果你想。。 but somehow I feel that "你" probably shouldn't be there.

[skylee]

Naturally I want to say 如果你想。。 but somehow I feel that "你" probably shouldn't be there.

It should be there.

[ala]

Naturally I want to say 如果你想。。 but somehow I feel that "你" probably shouldn't be there.

Yeah, having two clauses using 你's right by each other may seem a little awkward (wordy), but it's not wrong either.

You could also try:

想学中文的话，你必须从头开始。

If you want to study Chinese, you have to start from the beginning.

(some Chinese dialects, e.g. Shanghainese, avoid personal pronouns like the plague and would never address the same pronoun twice in a sentence if there is no ambiguity; but Mandarin uses them frequently).

[Desmond]

Awesome, thanks a lot!

When you say Shanghainese tries to avoid the reuse of personal pronounce, does this often carry out in the dialect of Mandarin they speak as well? Or just in Shanghainese?

[vengaya]

This post has made me wonder....

uhm.... isn't subject ellipsis admitted in Chinese?

I mean, ommiting the subject is not allowed in English, but you can do (and normally do) in Spanish, for instance, since there's a strong coordination between subject and predicate. Oddly enough, Japanese, with no verbal inflexion, also admit ellipsis of the subject.

So can we omit the subject as well in Chinese?

[Lu]

Yes. Not always, but it's very normal.

From my second year of studying Chinese:

Mother: And stay on the path on your way to Grandma!

Little Red Riding Hood: Zhidao le, mama!

[ala]

uhm.... isn't subject ellipsis admitted in Chinese?

Yeah, but in Mandarin most of these constructions involve the modal particle 了. For example, 知道了 ("the existence in the state of knowing"), 吃了, etc.