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Lesson 30 of 34

苦 in Context

CONGRATULATIONS! 
The Character You Just Learned is Also a Common Word!

Usage 1 - "bitter": 

Sentence:

我喜欢吃苦的巧克力。  

English: 

I like to eat bitter chocolate.

Top-Down Words:

喜欢 xǐhuān - to like
巧克力 qiǎokèlì - chocolate
 


Sentence:

 药真苦。

English: 

The medicine is very bitter.


*Sentence:

药这么苦,我还是多吃菜吧!

English: 

The medicine is so bitter, I should just eat some more vegetables.

Top-Down Words: 

吧 ba - (particle expressing suggestion)


Usage 2 - "emotionally difficult":

*Sentence:

为了孩子,父母再苦也觉得是甜的。

English:

As long as it's for their children, no matter how hard things are, parents will think it's OK. 

Top-Down Words:

孩子 háizi - child, children
觉得 juéde - to think, to feel
甜 tián - sweet



Need a Reminder?

The Six Steps to Learning Words

Understanding Chinese Words - Morphemes

3 Questions About Words


Member Comments from 2019-mid-2020

Do you also want to leave a comment? You can do so below!

Abigail

For the last sentence I found a helpful grammar point in Pleco regarding 再:
[used correlatively with 也, followed by a negative expression] no matter how...still (not)

Great Job! Keep Going! 做 in Context
Comments   7

Annette Bicknell

我喜欢吃苦的巧克力. You translate as "bitter chocolate", is this a specifically "bitter" chocolate that people buy in China, different from "dark chocolate" which depending on its sugar content can be somewhat bitter. Just wondering why you translate it as "bitter" if it is "dark" chocolate given your preference for interpretive translation instead of word translation.

REPLY

Mandarin Blueprint

It's just how this particular person wished to describe it at the time and we translated it as such. They do say dark chocolate (黑巧克力) in China so it makes sense to translate it like this .

REPLY

Micaela Ellison

Food vocabulary. My favorite! When I read 苦的巧克力, I just assumed it was talking about bittersweet chocolate. So that makes me wonder, can you say 苦甜的巧克力?

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Matt Shubert

I'm really surprised there's not any other comments on the last sentence because to me this was a lot to unpack and really difficult to logic out to get to the translation!

为了孩子

I translated this as "for the sake of [their] children" but the translation of the phrase given is "as long as it's for their children". Is the idea that there's a missing 如果 or 要是 there to make it a conditional?

再苦也

Thanks to Abigail's comment, I figured this is saying something like "no matter how emotionally difficult, still..." Is that correct?

父母...觉得是甜的

The 是。。。的 pattern I'm okay with, but is 甜 a normal way to say something like this? The top-down definition given is "sweet", and I know often these words have a more poetic or abstract meaning in Chinese but that seems like a stretch to me to mean "okay", would using something like 不错 or 还好 be much different in meaning?

Sorry for all the questions and I know some of this is probably partly answered in context of the later story, but this is one of those sentences that I am just having issues making a connection with even when it's translated for me. Thanks!

REPLY

Mandarin Blueprint

Here's a video response for you, Matt: https://www.loom.com/share/c3f6bd6670a14376815c1d39226f31b3

为了·孩子,父母·再苦·也·觉得是甜的。

REPLY

Matt Shubert

This is a great explanation, thanks heaps Phil!

REPLY

MB Team

This is where Luke and Phil talked about your question in the Mandarin Blueprint Podcast:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45KKuYfqHz0&t=3721s

REPLY