Negative adjectives with "-si le"

Revision as of 03:23, 19 February 2013 by Guomubai (talk | contribs)

We might say things in English like "you scared me to death!". In Chinese, you can say a lot of things "to death" to negatively intensify what you want to say. the opposite is to use Positive adjectives with "-ji le".

Structure

One way to intensify negative adjectives is to put 死了 (sǐle) after them. This is very similar to the phrase "to death" in English.

Subject + Negative adjective + 死了

Note that this structure is a degree complement (called 程度补语 in Chinese).

Examples

  • 我 饿 死了
  • 他 难看 死了
  • 你 胖 死了

None of these sentences involves someone actually dying. As with "to death" in English, this structure simply intensifies the adjective. Notice how these are awkward to translate into English - 死了 is a lot more versatile than "to death".

See also

Sources and further reading

Books