“qingkuang bu yiding liaojie” should be “I’m not certain I understood the situation.” Where that “bu” goes is important (contrary to what I thought before) and “bu yiding” is a unit that roughly equals “maybe.”

syz,

Speaking of pressure, don’t forget about MY little wish list (anchor link created just for you!)

The “bù xǐhuān” thing is interesting and I fully agree with your assessment. At some point I gave up on trying to parallel ài to “love” in English, at least for food. I don’t even think it quite works the same in the affirmative. In other words, “Wǒ ài chī tǔdòur” is not necessarily as emphatic as “I love to eat potatoes” and can be more like “I like potatoes.”

Alexis, you’re onto something with the “qualitative impressions of native speakers” thread. Research is my gig in real life, so it makes me want to ask some Beijingers what comes to mind when they hear
1. Shanghai accent
2. Guangdong accent
3. Gansu accent
(I mean “accent when speaking pǔtōnghuà” of course, not anything about Wu or Cantonese.)

I wonder if we’d be able to draw parallels to English in America, where certain accents, e.g. Appalachian, are “uneducated”, others, e.g. London, are “educated” (regardless of actual educational attainment), and Australian is, of course, “radio DJ”.

Not sure whether you’ll check back but, in case you do, I look forward to reading something on ‘bu’. I think you have something there. I’m not sure that it’s quite as strong as, “I certainly didn’t understand the situation,” but there’s something certainly worth looking into.

Something which has troubled me is, when offered something I really don’t want to eat, if I say ‘我不喜欢吃…’ (wǒ bù xìhuan chī…, literaly, ‘I don’t like to eat…’ ), people continue to try to force me to eat whatever it may be, but if I say, ‘我不爱吃…’ (wǒ bù ài chī…, literally, ‘I don’t love to eat…’) then people just accept that I don’t want to eat it.

To me, ‘I don’t love (to eat),’ means, ‘It’s OK, but not great;’ ‘I don’t like (to eat),’ means, ‘I really don’t want to eat it.’

This has happened to me on a number of occasions, and with different people, but I don’t claim to have done a serious survey. However, if representative, might it suggest that ‘不’ (bu) is more strictly negative than ‘not/don’t'? I mean, in English, ‘not’ can suggest the absence of, but in Chinese it suggests ‘the opposite of’. So in, ‘I don’t like’, like is relatively mild, and ‘not like’ is therefore also relatively mild – ‘maybe you don’t like it, but try it anyway.’ In, ‘I don’t love’, love is much stronger, so ‘Oh, then we won’t make you try it.’

Can anyone help on this (native speakers especially)?

Alexis,
I quite agree, and would love to know a native speaker’s impression. Hope I sound like that when I’m a hundred and two.

There’s a weird thing in Chinese (maybe I should blog this) where they sometimes put the “bu” way earlier than we would. In fact, yes. I’ll blog that next. (But who knows when next will be.)