'mei you'

crowbar · 10-09-2003 4:29am #1

this has been wrecking me head for a while. the putonghua speakers say 'mei you' for 'no', the cantonese speakers say 'mmm hai' in some contexts and 'moh' in others but what's the correct way to write 'no'? and just what is wrong with 'bu'? nobody seems to use it except on signs like no smoking!

ezpzie · 10-09-2003 12:59pm

mei you (mandarin) means without.
bu (mandarin) means don't (I think).
It's the grammar of the whole thing! tis difficult.. maybe we can get some clarification from someone currently studying chinese?

DEmeant0r · 10-09-2003 5:16pm

Mei you also sounds like when there's a little rain. forgot the word in english

crowbar · 10-09-2003 9:48pm

drizzle, demeant0r ... the eskimos have 22 words for rain, but there's no eskimo language forum on boards.

DEmeant0r · 10-09-2003 10:28pm

Aye, thanks crowbar, been learning chinese too much these days that I'm neglecting my English.

Treetypie · 11-09-2003 10:21pm

"Mei you" means without or in other words not.
"Bu" means no in a sense but behind other words it's like un + word and behind other words it's like not also.

You all have to pick the most complicating words don't you!

crowbar · 11-09-2003 10:42pm

thanks treetypie, welcome aboard boards.ie and to this forum, btw! but ... people don't say "wo bu you yi ge <something>" but rather tend to say "wo mei you yi ge <something>" - i was just wondering if it was more correct or perhaps "mei you" is less forceful and authoritarian than "bu you".

ah ... complication is the life of spice

DEmeant0r · 12-09-2003 2:16pm

Welcome to boards.ie and the chinese forums Treetypie, enjoy your stay

Treetypie · 12-09-2003 5:32pm

Thanks loads for the wekcome!

Ermm, mandarin speech would be "wo mei you" something. That's right. But in canto it would be "ngaw mo"something.
It's definately better grammer to say "mei you" then "bu you"
I think "bu" literally means not.

SKWei · 20-09-2003 10:08pm

In Mandarin, Bu is the negator put in front of the verb "shi", the general verb "to be", and of stative verbs, like haokan or pang or whatever that don't need "shi" before them. "Mei" is the negator put before "you", which is nearer to the English usage of "are".
There's a Taiwanese pop song called "Wo shi yi zhi xiao xiao xiao xiao niao", "I am a little bird."
Given that Niao is a character with more than one pronunciation, if you wrote that in characters as "wo you yi zhi xiao xiao …" it would mean something quite different!!!

I've always wondered if Chinese people who live in Mayo have a particularly defeatist outlook on life given the very name of the place they live:p

ezpzie · 15-11-2003 7:28pm

LOL - true!

Have you noticed the way that Irish towns actually translate quite badly? - My mum sometimes has problems with pronunciating English and we try to "dumb" down the names with rough chinese equivalents and they're quite funny to translate. Sligo for example is quite hard.. do you try for sli - go or s (si) - li (meaning pull) - go (roughly meaning paste) - yes it's a pulling paste?

Dublin is the same problem - dub bu lun - or properly do pak lun - which isn't as bad but everyone calls it dub bu lun.

SKWei · 15-11-2003 7:36pm

It is difficult, especially when going between Mandarin and Cantonese. I remember seeing a British map of the British Isles in Chinese in the Irish embassy in Beijing, and it was all transliteration, my hometown Wexford being Weikesifude, but why Fude and not Fu'erte like the car company Ford? Or even a translation of the Norse, "Nijin"? (Mandarin, sorry, I never got round to looking up Cantonese pronouncinations, a future project

)Dubolin works pretty well in Mandarin, though Mandarin speakers there say Euro rather than Ou'yuan…which, in my case, brings us neatly back to the topic: "Mei you!!!":p

tribble · 15-11-2003 7:37pm

AFAIK

Wo bu shi = I don't want (it) = No thanks

Well it worked for me at least.

tribble

ezpzie · 15-11-2003 7:42pm

A little off topic.. but my Mum says ngau yuen for Euro (cantonese), I think it's a little easier for mandarin speakers to say something like Euro because the language is more flexi than Cantonese. I still catch people saying bong (pound) when referring to currency and isn't it weird than ngoi yee lan (Ireland) is symbolised first by the symbol for love?

SKWei · 16-11-2003 10:44am

That's just from the mandarin I'm afraid "Aierlan", a reasonable transliteration. The "love" character was always used as the standard in the past for transliterating. In fact, even AIDS "Aizibing" used it at first, but it has changed to a simpler, "less meaningful" character these days, as have most transliterations using that sound.
Albania starts with the "Love" character too.
Not too interesting that, I'm just saying it cos I know it…:p

'mei you'

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