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This article focuses on the use of direction complements in figurative language, such as in English phrases like ‘clean up’, ‘calm down’, ‘figure out’, etc. If you’re unfamiliar with directional complements, I recommend reading the following links first. 📖 Basic Direction Complement📖 Compound direction complements V + 起來/起来 qǐlái 1. Bring things together 加jiā起來qǐlái加jiā起来qǐláiAdd up…
Before we discuss the compound direction complements, it’s important to ensure that you have a good understanding of all the basic direction complements. Otherwise, you may have difficulty following this article. What is compound direction complement? A Chinese compound directional complement is formed by combining two or more basic directional words to express more specific movement or…
Grammar Point:A direction complement is a complement used to describe the direction of a verb in Chinese. For example, the verb “走 zǒu” means “to walk”. However, to specify which direction you are walking in, you can add a direction complement to describe where you are walking to. For example, 走zǒu進jìn走zǒu进jìnWalk in 走zǒu出chū走zǒu出chūWalk out Now, let’s take a…
Before we look up the direction words in Chinese, let me give you a suggestion. Do not ask any Taiwanese the direction of east, west, north, or south. Seriously we never use it. Even on our map, the north is not on the north sometimes. In Taiwan, we only use right, left, go straight, and…