Both students of Chinese and English alike have probably heard of the term “collocation” (固定搭配), the idea that certain words are more commonly used together than others. What we’re essentially talking about is a relatively “fixed” combination of two or more words.
It does not seem terribly difficult to come up with collocations in English. We say, for example, “eat soup”, not “drink soup” as the Chinese do (喝汤). Likewise, in English we say “make a phone call to sb” or just “call sb”, while Mandarin has the more complicated structure of 给[某人]打电话.
But while there are numerous collocations dictionaries in the English language, I’ve yet to come across any for Chinese. If anyone can suggest any in the comments section I’d be most grateful.
I am also trying to make my own list of collocations in Chinese, along with their English counterparts. The kind of collocations I want to focus on, as a Chinese learner, are the kind you can’t find in dictionaries. I don’t want to talk too much about structures like “一边…一边…”, “不但…而且…”, etc. either; the way I see it, they are more like sentence structures than collocations per se. Anyway, those kind of structures you can find in any decent Chinese textbook. What I want to explore is what common collocations exist in Chinese, specifically verb-object collocations as they are usually the most practical/interesting.
I think this kind of research can benefit learners of any language, since learning how to use collocations correctly is one of the most effective ways to improve your proficiency.
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