When words get contracted, they become super ambiguous yet people still use them like the youre -your and its -it in English. Theres one particular case of Malaysian Mandarin that is insanely confusing. Its 要yao4 First of all, it has multiple meanings of which two are unfortunately similar in usage. 1)要 -to want 2)(一定)要／(需)要 must. The character in brackets are normally immured making the words identical to 要(to want ) I caught myself saying this a few times. 我不要去可是我要去 I dont yao to go but I yao to go. (I dont want to go but I have to go) And the negated form of 要yao is 不要 buyao WHICH is shortened to byao/biao. The following situation happens a thousand times every day. A: Ni yao ma? (DO you want it?) B: byao! ( no, I dont want it) A: har? Yao ah? (Huh? You want it?) B: BYAO! (NO, I DONT! ) A: yao. OK (You want it? Good ) B: BU YAO! (NO, I DO NOT want it )
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 13:40:44 +0000
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