那 meaning that in questions

Hi,

I was wondering if it's true that 那 means "that" when it appears in questions that have 馬, while it means "which, what" if no question particle appears. Basically I'm wondering if I'm right in thinking that 那也是中文書馬? can only mean "Is that also a Chinese book?" and cannot mean "Which (book) is also a Chinese book?"

Similarly, am I right in thinking that the difference between 那本書是他的? and 那本書是他的馬? is that the first is unambiguously "Which book is his?" and the second is unambiguously "Is that his book?"?

Thanks.

那 always means "that," even when used in the context of “吗？“

“那也是中文书吗？“ I would correct this with the addition of 本 after 那， to keep the same correct translation of "Is that also a Chinese (language) book?"

"那本书是他的。" Means "That book is his," because if there is not question word marker like "吗"， then there is no question being asked.

“那本书是他的吗？“ Your translation of "Is that book his?" is correct here.

“哪本书是他的？“ means "Which book is his?," note the mouth radical "口" at the beginning of the character “哪,“ which is a very similar character.

The difference between 那 （na4） "that" and 哪 (na3) "which" is very slight while typing, but is very noticeable while reading and/or speaking. Its the difference between making a statement and asking a question, and has been something that my Chinese Profs have blasted into my head . I'm sorry that I can't type in Traditional Characters for you (I'm learning the PRC standard 普通话, and thus only have Simplified Input ready on my computer) but suffice to say that "书" (shu4) is "book" and "吗" (ma) is the yes-no question marker.

Good luck with your studies!

Ding Yiyi's reply is very good.

I would like to add something.

那本书是他的？=Is that his book? Means the questioner doubt whether the book is his, or express his/her surprise when he/her get to know that the book is his.

那本书是他的吗？= Is that his book? Just like to know whether the book is his.

Thanks for your answers, but they left me a little confused because the book I'm using (Beginning Chinese Reader) clearly has 那 for both na4 and na3, and all the examples I wrote in my first post are right out of the book -- I'd be too scared to come up with my own sentences at this point. Maybe it's the age of the book -- it was printed in 1966 -- and maybe the orthography was different back then? Although, I guess I need to keep this in mind now, and think about what should be there.

But Ding Yiyi, your explanation was extremely clear, thank you. About the characters, it's not a problem -- I somehow ended up with a reader that has traditional and a reference grammar that uses simplified -- mind you, none of this was on purpose, I just sort of stumbled into things -- so the exposure always helps. I'm typing in traditional just so I can be positive that things are exactly as in my reader.

vackey, about 那本书是他的？, I assume it's pronounced differently than 那本书是他的 (as a statement), but what would that difference be? Or am I wrong, and it would be phrased differently?

The only difference between the two sentences would be the pronunciation of the "na" "na3" would make it a question, "na4" would make it a statement. Now you see why the question word “吗” is so important!

I am going to say that you should probably start making the 哪 and 那 distinctions I told you about, I don't think you'd find too many people on this site that'd disagree with me but you should certainly ask if you're interested! Though I'm certainly on a lower level of my studies than many here. Also, if you're trying to learn Mandarin as written on the Mainland, you really don't need to learn the Traditional Characters, but they're useful for Taiwan, so you can decide if they're useful for you. The only places that still use the Traditional Characters are Hong Kong and Taiwan (there might be a few more Special Administrative Regions on the mainland that I didn't list, but those are the top two). And in Hong Kong they speak Cantonese (and English), so though you could understand the Characters, the grammar would be off (and they use a few characters deemed archaic in Mandarin).

As to the book, I'd suggest something printed more recently, as all languages change over time (I remember studying German in high school out of a book printed in the 1980s, in the early 2000s, yikes!) I can't even imagine what it would be like to study Chinese out of a book printed in the 1960s today! The book my professors have us buy is the New Practical Chinese Reader... except I wouldn't suggest that because the set is quite a lot of $$$, I'm not sure its the best out there, and it certainly isn't designed for self-study.

I take it you're an absolute newbie to studying, so I'd like to ask if you're taking lessons, or are in a class somewhere with a teacher? The reason I ask is because some of the consonant sounds in Chinese are NOT found anywhere in English (though to the uninitiated there are similar sounds), and there are some distinctions you're only going to hear when a native speaker is around to correct you. Tones are also something you're going to want a native speaker around to correct you, because in the very beginning my tones were fairly spastic, and only with time (and mild reprimands) do you learn how to accurately make the tones, and only with practical listening experience do you learn to actually hear the tonal distinctions. Examples that I've had trouble with are the distinctions between the Q and the Ch sound, especially when they're put together like in 出去. I'm sure its possible to learn on your own, but I personally know that when I try to teach myself a grammar structure or a bunch of vocabulary words without help, I get frustrated easily, but as soon as the teacher explains it, I magically understand. Its kinda cool

There are plently of free courses on the web, look in the links section of this site (my favoriate is the CRI course). The courses tend to concentrate on spoken language so you will need some books to explain the grammar.

I spent a number of years of self study and have finally started to have private lessons because I found myself unable to prounance the words correctly.

I recommend that when you learn vocabulary to learn to write and speak it at the same time. This is not only because learning vocabulary is such a large task that after you have spent years learning the characters you are unlikely to every be able to motivate yourself to then start to learn the pinyin and pronanciation. After you have learnt a few hundred characters you will notice that the same radicals come-up again and again, also often characters are phonetic based so learning to speak them at the same time will help you to remember the characters. (if you look in the links section you will find a link to blank writing practise sheets).

I've used Beginning Chinese Reader before. It's quite a good book, actually. Some of the vocabulary is quite outdated, but it does a good job of systematically introducing new characters and repeating them enough so that the student becomes familiar with them. For learning how to read, I found this approach vastly superior to the Practical Chinese Readers, which introduced characters based on the most frequently spoken words. The problem with that approach is that if you're a beginner, you're confronted with so many new characters in the initial few chapters that it becomes quickly overwhelming. Instead, DeFrancis introduces characters by what characters are most commonly used, and focuses on how the different characters can be combined to form new compounds. I'd say that if you can learn from it and find it enjoyable, keep using it! The most important thing when you're learning something new is to always stay motivated! If you feel compelled to use a "superior" learning method, but then get discouraged after a few weeks, how superior can that method be? When you get more advanced you can go back and learn the more colloquial ways of saying things.

A few things I've noticed about his books though (I'm currently in the Advanced Chinese Reader):

1. He has a few typos. They're quite infrequent, but they do exist. If you're stuck trying to understand something, it might be just a new grammar structure, but if you stare at it for a good long time, consider the possibility that he typed it in wrong.

2. Since he introduces a limited number of characters per chapter, in the beginning he makes use of what he taught to do as much as possible. There is a difference between 那 and 哪, the first means 'that' and the second means 'which?', but I've found that he frequently uses 那 for both cases. He also uses 他 to mean he/she/it even after he's introduced 她 (she) and 它 (it). Although it may make short sentences ambiguous (I've had a few unresolved sentences in his books), it'll make it easier if you consider that he might be referring to either meaning in his sentence.

While it might be technically correct to differentiate between 那 and 哪 in your writing, I've seen Chinese people use 那 in both cases too. With enough context, the meaning becomes understood anyway. Since you're still learning the beginning stuff, I'd try not to focus too much on this point and try to learn the other stuff from the book.

3. He sometimes uses a character in his examples that he hasn't introduced yet (usually it comes from the next chapter). It's frustrating to think that maybe you forgot the character already, but after enough looking through the books, sometimes he just doesn't remember what order he introduces characters in (or he switches them around afterwards). Since the books are old, the editing was all done by hand, so I don't envy who ever had the task of checking all these things for accuracy.

There are two nas (ok, there are more, but two are relevant here):

1) na4 meaning that, written as 那

2) na3 meaning which, written as 那 or 哪

DeFrancis writes them both as 那, which means you'll have to ask yourself which one he means every time you see a 那. Nowadays, people usually distinguish between these two nas, but you'll still see 那 for na3 sometimes.

Ding Yiyi,

I'm currently on my own (except there's you guys too , at least until I get too annoying), but here where I am, there are a lot of Mandarin-speaking students, who are interested in I-help-you-with-English-you-help-me-with-Mandarin tutoring, but I want to get a grounding at least in the basics so that I can get something out of such a situation. Actually, I might not be an absolute newbie, just because for about a year now, off and on, I've learned about pinyin and what sounds it represents and listened to samples online and tested myself, and I think I'm okay with the consonants and vowels except things like che vs. chi (but to be honest, I can't reliably distinguish q and ch on their own, but I've learned that you can tell which is which on the basis of the following vowel). Tones are a different story and I do try to make reasonable attempts at them but this will be a major difficulty for me for a long time.

And thanks for your advice and help. It looks like I'll have to consider switching books, but I'll see how things go. Your point about the characters is very persuasive, and you're right about the age (but at least it seems more oriented towards writing so I won't be learning any forty-year-old colloquialism).

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johnmck,

Thanks for the references. I do try to speak out loud what I'm reading, but I guess the biggest problem is there's nothing that checks whether my pronunciation is even close to being right. That gives me a lot to think about.

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WangYuHong,

Those are some of the things I like about the book too, but thanks for telling me what to keep a look out for. I think I'll stick with it for now and see how things go, but I'm happy the 那 vs. 哪 issue was pointed out to me, because it preemptively answered a question I would have soon had when I noticed that my reference grammar does make this distinction.

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P.S.: I hope it's not impolite on this board to answer more than one person in the same post.

I recently stumbled across this site while reading the forum, a kind of linguistic explanation for people without linguistics backgrounds:

http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/

The way you curl your tongue has a big difference with the difference between 出 and 去。 Before I came across this site, my professors had always told me that my pronunciation was off, but they couldn't figure out what was actually wrong. I hope this helps, and I'm glad you have a lot of people from Mandarin-speaking areas around you, I'd encourage you to talk to them as much as possible and make good friends with them. They'll help you with any pronunciation mistakes you've got, but you might find that they're not as much help with upper-level grammar (think about trying to explain complex sentences in English to even another English speaker, assuming you aren't already amazing at English grammar), but it sounds like you aren't near anything really upper-level, so for now, self-study with lots of 中国朋友们. As you progress I'd suggest checking out the sticky on the Grammar and Vocab forum, it has a lot of grammar rules, and this site also has a lot of links to universities that have grammar worksheets and exercises. Explore, this site has accumulated amazing amounts of resources! Good luck to you, and remember that this site is available for asking any questions at all, anytime, and if your question has already been answered we'll redirect you there. Have fun with your studying!

modus,

Ding Yiyi have answered the question.

那本书是他的？When the sentence ends with a question mark, the tone of 的 is rising。 The sentence is a question.

那本书是他的。When the sentence ends withe a full stop, it is just a statement.

I am sorry to say that your book is out off date. We Chinese students' book are quite

different nowadays.

那and 哪 are different in mordern Chinese, but they are the same in the old days, which we call it 文言文 in Chinese. Maybe my expressions are not clear enough because of my poor English, but if you need any help, just let me know.