早兩天跟同事聊天，不知怎地說起玉帝和灶君來。同事問：玉帝是否叫 the Jade Emperor？栗子妹想了想，說：不用 the 吧？可不，原來非 the 不可。
英語文法中，把 a、an、the 歸類為冠詞 (article)。這三個字看似簡單，但要掌握用法絕對不易。以 Jade Emperor 為例，栗子妹以為該是跟 President、Prime Minister 同類。據 Swan 的 Practical English Usage 所載，這些名稱後面如沒有接國家名 (如 the President of the United States)，便可省略冠詞。現在非加 the 不可，莫非是要強調玉帝獨一無二？(類似 the sun、the moon 等說法)
除了玉帝，據悉商店名稱前面一般會加 the，例如 the ABC Clothes Shop。對於這個用法，栗子妹感到莫名其妙。商店名明明已經用了大楷，又不是註冊商標，為甚麼還要加 the？
還是那句：用法這回事，從來沒有黃金定律，只能見一個、記一個~~~
article 可能中文無所以比 較唔習慣. The is one in particular. A president is a president from any countries (could be anybody). When speaking about the United States, (a particular country) there is one president so it is the president of the United States. Jade Emperor is just word for word translation. Still there could be a king sometimes ago called himself the Jade Emperor. hehe. More likely it would just be God. Your Chinese is so much better than mine, may I ask you is there any other Chinese phases that have the similar meaning as 加油? I can't get use to this hybrid mutant phase but can't find anything better! I can't believe with the richness of Chinese language there isn't a better phase for encouragement. If so there is a problem with the culture. Can someone please give me something better in Chinese?!
回覆刪除[版主回覆01/14/2010 07:43:00]堅：我也有想過「加油」這個問題，想來最接近的中文該是「努力」或是廣東話的「俾心機」吧？如果想到再好的，一定留言告訴閣下 ;)
I guess Chinese do not encourage other too much.
回覆刪除I think Emperor Jade could do without the article, but not Jade Emperor. By the way, how many jade emperors does China have?
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This may or may not be at odds with Swan. But in American English, at least, a job title requires caps. As to the need of using an article, if the context is such that it's a regular noun, then yes, but if it's clearly a proper noun, then no. Does that make sense? I disagree with Swan that "the president" expression can do without the "the". "The" needs to be there, although "president" does not need to be capped.