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Video Request: Clarify 份来

Lesson Suggestion
#1

Suggested Difficulty：beginner/intermediate
Video or Audio: video
Lesson Idea:

份来 Means, “copies”

我是一月份来的。Means, “I came in January.”

Usually, when I dissect a Chinese sentence, looking up the different characters in my dictionary, often there’s a logical connection between the characters and the meaning. But when I look up this word, it seems to have only one translation in my dictionaries. Both dictionaries say it means copies. If I came in January I definitely did not make a copy of myself … please explain this 份 or 分。

Thanks a lot, I’m a big fan. Good job on the new videos.

  • Michael
#2

Ah, you broke up the words incorrectly. 一月份=一月=January. So the basic form of the sentence is 我来， you add in the time you came: 一月份，and the 是…的 pattern emphasizing the time. This is a common difficulty in Chinese because there are no spaces to distinguish words. If the way you break up a sentence into words doesn’t make sense, try breaking it up into different words :slight_smile:

#3

Hello! When you are saying this phrase “一月份” you don’t have to translate 份, you can also say it without， 一月.

份 can also mean part or portion. If I were to streeeach it… you could perhaps look at it like in some part or portion of January you arrived. However thats not an official explanation.

一月份 is a colloquial phrase, 份 links with 一月 not with 来.