# 得 / 的



## HeiShan

Please help!

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out which character I should use for "de" in the following sentence.

My Chinese speak not well (transliterated)

Wo putonghua shuo de bu hao

我普通话说得不好
or
我普通话说的不好

Thanks again!


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## xiaolijie

我普通话说得不好 is correct but sometimes you can also see the other sentence, which has a typo/ mistake for 得.


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## HeiShan

Thank you xiaolijie!


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## Dragonseed

With my limited grammar vocabulary, I think I have an explanation that helped me understood the difference:

的 is a noun-complement, it links a noun (or a pronoun) with another one in a "belonging" relationship (as in 我的筆 / wo3 de bi3 / my pen)
得 is a verb-complement, it allows you to explain furthermore the verb it completes (in your example "我普通话说得不好", "不好" specifies how you 说普通话). Therefore the whole "得+adjective" can be seen as an adverbial compound: "得不好" = badly

Hope this helps...


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## xiaolijie

By the way, 我普通话说得不好 means "I don't speak Chinese very well". 

(If, however, you really want to say, as in your opening post, "My Chinese speak not well " (_Not a good English sentence!_), then your 2nd sentence "我普通话说的不好" may be a closer of that, but it is _not a good Chinese sentence_.)


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## HeiShan

Hahaha! You have misunderstood.
"My Chinese speak not well" is a transliterated sentence! 

Wo=I/My
Putonghua=Common Language/Chinese/Mandarin
Shuo de=speak
Bu=not
Hao=well/good

Therefore, "Wo putonghua shuo de bu hao" transliterated can be "My Chinese speak not well".

Thanks again everyone! Dragonseed that is especially helpful! ^_^


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## with0out

to HeiShan：
I'm a chinese. My chinese teacher used to said that in today's speech 的 and 得 also 地 have much in common.
我的语文老师以前说的，的地得现在不细分了，很多地方都是通用的。

我普通话说得不好 
我普通话说的不好 

你长得很漂亮 
你长的很漂亮 



hope it helps


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## HeiShan

Thank you! 

Quick unrelated question

duibuqi = Excuse me/sorry/pardon me

Why is this so? I'm having trouble understanding the direct meaing of the characters

dui = correct
bu = negative/no/not
qi  = rise

correct not rise? That can not be right.  Can anyone enlighten me on the history of this phrase and why it means "sorry/pardon me"? 

Thank you


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## BODYholic

HeiShan said:


> Quick unrelated question
> 
> duibuqi = Excuse me/sorry/pardon me


Strictly speaking "duibuqi" does not = Excuse me/sorry/pardon me.
Since you agreed that it is quite unrelated, you may consider starting a new thread for this.

cheers.


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## with0out

对:face sth
对得起:be able to face sth/sb
对不起:be unable to face sth/sb(cause u did something wrong,shamed sb)


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## tzyy

in spoken Chinese, there's no different

in written form, big difference

的 noun+de+noun(我的书my book) adj/adv+de+noun（漂亮的花beautiful flower）
得 verb+de+noun+...（打得他昏死过去beat him till pass out） verb+de+adv/adj（跑得快run fast） verb+de+verb（红得发紫very famous）
地 adj/adv+de+verb （漂亮地进了一个球 nice shot）

anything additional?


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## ywf

with0out said:


> to HeiShan：
> I'm a chinese. My chinese teacher used to said that in today's speech 的 and 得 also 地 have much in common.
> 我的语文老师以前说的，的地得现在不细分了，很多地方都是通用的。
> 
> 我普通话说得不好
> 我普通话说的不好
> 
> 你长得很漂亮
> 你长的很漂亮
> 
> 
> 
> hope it helps



Forgive me, with0out, but let me just say, fortunately enough, I was not taught by your teacher. I have never heard of any teacher encouraging students to use characters against grammar books.

I kid you not, a lengthy article with all of the "地" and the "得" replaced with "的" would be more difficult for me to read.


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## sarahyo

在中国，现在“的”和“得”是通用的，但“地”不是通用的。这主要是因为大家常把“的”和“得”搞混，到后来就干脆通用了。
grammar books上说的都是标准语法，以上我说的是日常生活中的情况。
建议ywf学汉语的时候不要只看grammar books（如果你是为了日常交流的话），照那上面的语法知识说出来的话都是很刻板的，不自然。
就像"地" "得" "的" ，区分的时候并不难，因为发音都是一样的，平时注意一下培养语感，就什么都不难了。


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## Mugi

HeiShan said:


> Hahaha! You have misunderstood.
> "My Chinese speak not well" is a transliterated sentence!
> 
> Wo=I/My
> Putonghua=Common Language/Chinese/Mandarin
> Shuo de=speak
> Bu=not
> Hao=well/good
> 
> Therefore, "Wo putonghua shuo de bu hao" transliterated can be "My Chinese speak not well".


 
Off topic, but actually what you have provided is not the "transliterated" sentence (that would be the sentence rendered in pinyin), but rather a "direct, literal translation" (there's probably another specific term, but I don't know it".
To "transliterate" something merely means to phonetically represent it in a different system from the original.


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## Jamison

briefly, 的 comes after a noun/a.(别人的XX/漂亮的XX) and 得 comes after a verb(操作得X).


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## BODYholic

Jamison said:


> briefly, 的 comes *after* a noun/a.(别人的XX/漂亮的XX)


I believe you meant to say *before*.


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## xiaolijie

Jamison said:
			
		

> 得 comes after a verb(操作得X).


的 comes after a verb as well (我写的信), my friend


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## Jamison

Thank you sooo much, BODYholic and xiaolijie!

Its hard to recall the rule of using the two characters as it was told by my teacher when *I* was a first-year-student in elementary school  and time past, *I* can use them proficiently now without recalling it, haha.


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## guaguaboy

得：adv
的：adj. / possessive form (eg. my, your, his, etc. 我的，你的，他的)

Well, HeiShan, actually if you go deep into English grammar, I bet you'd find it very similar to learn Chinese and English. Just compare two of them and sometimes you'll figure it out. piece of cake ... lol

Robbie


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