As a Chinese teacher, I always enjoy
teaching Chinese in my class with the standard curriculums. However, I also
notice there are multitudes of small pieces of information which wouldn’t be
mentioned in a textbook. Hence I decided to share these small treasures of the
Chinese language. I think these details will make our communication in Chinese
better.
One phrase that has trouble me a lot is: ‘好吧’.There
was one time when I had an American colleague who struggled with using this
phrase correctly. He certainly knew: ‘好’means‘good’, ‘ok’, ‘great’and‘吧’ is just a particle word, so for him ‘好吧’
was something about ‘great’. Sowhen I would suggest ideas with him at work, he
would say‘好吧’.
It was confusing and frustrating because I was unclear of his meaning of the
phrase.
Let’s look at the following example between
a boy and girl:
Boy：明天我们去看电影好吗？
Shall we go to theater tomorrow?
Girl：好吧。
OK
Boy：如果你不想看，没关系。
It’s ok if you wouldn’t like to.
When the girl said ‘好吧’, the boy definitely felt that she didn’t want
to do it. ‘好吧’
is usually understood as a compromising OK to a suggestion where you can’t say
no and people know you don't like it.When I heard ‘好吧’ from him, I was unsure about what my
colleague’s attitude was towards me.I thought my colleague never agreed with me
and he would never give me suggestions.After some time of hearing it all the
time, we figured out the misunderstanding and made sure that he understood how
to use it correctly in daily situations.
Since we know ‘好吧’ is a unique phrase, what else we can use for
positive ‘ok’, ‘good’…? Here are four commonly used words or phrases:
1.
好
2.
好的
3.
行
4.
嗯with a nod (my personal favorite).
Let’s take look at the same example that we
looked at earlier using one of the commonly used phrases or words.
Boy: 明天我们去看电影好吗？
Shall we go to the theater tomorrow?
Girl: 好！/好的！/行！/嗯
OK.
As you can see, when using one these four
phrases it will be clear that girl definitely would like to go with the boy to
see that movie. She didn’t make it seem like a large ordeal to go to the movies
with the boy. Now they can happily enjoy the movie tomorrow.
‘好吧’is still useful in the right situation.For
example, I always get ‘好吧’ from students as I assign homework:
Vera: 今天的作业是写一篇作文。
Home work for today is to write an essay.
Students：好吧。
OK.
In this case, I understand what they mean.
You should make sure you are using the phrases correctly as it is important for
you to appropriately convey your message. So if you can’t say ‘no’ and you do
want people know you don’t like it, say this aloud ‘好吧’!Stay tune for next tip and see you next time.
