Quirks of the Chinese language - questions, what and which

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Chinese is useful in China and Singapore.

I am inundated with incoming emails, countries of the world, cities, airlines, chocolate makers, travel clothes. When I was looking for important information, today, it was lost in the ocean or 'urgent' messages from people who wanted to sell me something. So I started deleting.

However, one message was from Duolingo from a discussion. I was about to delete it, but could not resist a quick look. My curiosity was rewarded with interesting information on Chinese language.

One person said that ma is not just a question word, as I had thought, but ends a question requiring a yes no answer. binary. One of two. So, you would end a question, do you want coffee or tea, with ma?
Coffee or tea - ma? Drink - na?

However, asking a 'what' question, what would you like to eat, which has infinite possibilities, would be shown by ending the sentence 'Na'.

Ma is similar to, 'Choose which one', or, 'Which of these alternatives do you prefer?'. Na is similar to, 'What kind would you like?' or an open-ended question.


English Questions

I started thinking about that distinction. It could help me explain to people learning English why you don't ask what when the question should be which.

In English, we use what for uncountable items, multiple choices, open ended questions. 'What are you doing?'

But which is for choices. Which bus? Five buses could be on the sign.

To correct your grammar as well as your spelling, use Grammarly.

You could go on for hours discussing ma and na and which and what.

Chinese Questions
The important thing for me as a beginner learningChinese is that I have learned to use ma and na to end questions. At very least, if I hear a Chinese speaker asking me about coffee, or tea, (in Asian languages cha or chai) using a sentence ending ma or na, it is a question.

if I and you learn one new word a day of Chinese, and by the end of the year we would know 365.

Another way to look at learning, is that if I read about ten words, although I might not remember them today, after reading all ten for ten days I would know ten words.

Useful Websites
Duolingo for free internet learning (with advertisements) on Chinese, Korean and several languages
duolingo.com
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/25238350$

chineasy.com

A great look inside kindle version is on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ChineasyTM-Everyday-World-Chinese-Characters/dp/0500292264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549652685&sr=8-1&keywords=chineasy

Sometimes you really need to know what a sign means. The Malaysian word - here is bahaya for danger - are easier than the Chinese, even though the Malay is three syllables.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. i have many more posts on languages.

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