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Lesson 18 of 46

刀子 in Context

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A NEW WORD HAS BEEN UNLOCKED 刀子
刀子

Usage 1 - "knife": 

*Sentence:

吃饭要用刀子和叉子。 

English:

Use a fork and knife while eating. 

Top-Down Words:

叉子 chāzi - fork 


Sentence

用刀子切鱼。 

English:

Use the knife to cut the fish. 

Top-Down Words:

切 qiē - to cut, to chop
鱼 yú - fish


Sentence

妈妈正在用刀子切苹果。

English:

Mom is using the knife to cut up apples right now. 

Top-Down Words:

切 qiē - to cut, to chop
苹果 píngguǒ - apple


*Sentence

一看到小孩子拿刀子,父母就很担心。

English:

As soon as the children picked up a knife, the parents were worried.

Top-Down Words:

看到 kàndào - to see (到 dào indicates that the "looking 看" was successful, aka "to see.")
孩子 háizi - child
就 jiù - (grammatical particle) in this case meaning “as soon as” or “right after."



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Comments   6

Makai Allbert

一看到小孩子拿刀子,父母就很担心

Is there a construction we can look for pertaining to "一看到" in the future? At first glance, I'd read this as "One caught sight of..." rather than "as soon as".

REPLY

Mandarin Blueprint

This is the "一...就..." construction, and yes, we'll cover it in more detail in future lessons. It's a pretty simple structure: "一 [first thing] 就 [second thing] -> As soon as first thing happened, second thing happened"

REPLY

MB Team

This is where Luke and Phil talked about your question in the Mandarin Blueprint Podcast:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCNeY71eNDI&t=2175s

REPLY

Jason Pon

一看到小孩子拿刀子,父母就很担心。

I reckon 拿 can be both 'hold' and 'pick up' as per the translation ?

REPLY

Mandarin Blueprint

Yes, it could apply to both, but you'd probably see 拿起来/拿起来了 if the writer wanted to be more focused on the action of picking up the knife itself. Here, the focus is on the fact a child is holding/had picked up a knife so just 拿 by itself works best.

REPLY

MB Team

This is where Luke and Phil talked about your question in the Mandarin Blueprint Podcast:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11zahyd7f4&t=3768s

REPLY