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嫌 and it's uses/meaning

I Have a Question
#1

Hi CPod,

Yesterday I had a friend teach me a new word xian2 嫌 (I believe this is the correct character) and said that it is used to convey a negative aspect to something. My friend tried to give some examples but when I looked up the word in my dictionary I couldn’t really find a meaning that matched up with the explanations I received. The Dictionary would provide dislike, grudge, or suspicion.

I think one example they gave was "我觉得你嫌胖“ or something to that effect. Just wondering if @Constance_Fang or @Fiona could help provide some clarification for me.

Perhaps this could be a good topic for a QingWen episode?

Thanks!

#2

the 嫌 in your example sentence should be 显示的显

see: https://chinesepod.com/lessons/that-makes-you-look-fat#dialogue-tab

#3

Hey Matt!

Interesting question. The sentence you provide could possibly be one of those where it’s “grammatically incorrect” *, but is actually used in speech by native speakers in certain contexts.

Let me first give you the “correct” sentence.

X 嫌 Y
X dislikes a certain aspect of Y.
嫌 while meaning ‘dislike’, can be at times translated as ‘complain’.

他太太嫌他胖
His wife dislikes (the fact that) he is fat.

Fiona常常嫌Gwilym太胖
Fiona often complains that Gwilym is too fat.

Now, lets look at something closer to your sentence:

你看他嫌胖，我看他嫌瘦.
You think he is too fat! I think he’s too thin!

Below is the fully expanded version of the sentence above.

你看他你嫌她胖，但我看他我嫌她瘦

I fear I may have totally over complicated the situation. haha. At least you get some example sentences with 嫌.

Would be great to get more context on how your example sentence came into conversations. That way I feel like I could better answer your question. The reason it’s a bit cryptic is that it’s missing words (as seen in natural speech) and a bit of the context.

There is a possibility that is 显 xian3 rather than 嫌 xian2.

(i’ll have a little think and see if anything comes to mind)

Fi

#4

Hi Fi,

Thanks for the reply! You’re right about the grammar part, I can’t remember the exact example sentence they
mentioned.[quote=“Fiona, post:3, topic:910”]
I fear I may have totally over complicated the situation. haha. At least you get some example sentences with 嫌.
[/quote]

It’s not too complicated at all, the examples were great and helped me understand much more clearly. I will also talk to my friend again and ask them for the specific example they gave so perhaps this will give you more to work on. Either way I appreciate the response :slight_smile: