A bit off topic, but I see Skritter has a word list for the 500-word text Mother and Son in the Chinese Breeze series.

I have now read two books from the 300-word level and two from the 500-word level, and there are two sentences that I cannot understand. There must be someone here who's read it and can explain to me.

First, on p. 13, the mother spends a lot of time cleaning the son's room after he has left home:

好象除了收悉房间还是收悉房间。

I don't understand the repetition.

Edit: should have written 收拾, not 收悉

Second, there is the last sentence in the book. I think it contains an idiom, and I can't find it in my dictionaries. The son now understood:

有一些东西，你有它的时候， 可是不觉得好； 可是没有了， 才知道没有它不行。

I think the 不行 may mean 'is impossible', in the sense of 'nothing is impossible', but I can't confirm it.

In this connection, I could ask my Chinese teacher on Thursday, but I wonder if there's another way I could have worked out these sentences. I managed the rest of it. Are the dictionaries I have in Pleco too small? I realize these books contain some Chinese syntax that is perhaps more advanced than the vocab, but I can find that in grammar books on the few occasions I can't work it out for myself.

(When I wrote this header I was told by The Professor 'Sorry, we don't have family discounts'!)

Many thanks in advance for any help,

Margaret

好像除了收拾房间还是收拾房间。
It seems like apart from tidying the room, it is still tidying the room.


没有它不行 – can't do without it

可是没有了，才知道没有它不行。
But when you don't have it anymore, only then would you know that you can't do without it.

这可不行 this simply won't do
那不行 that won't do
还是不行 still won't do

Great, thanks very much. I think my problem with the last sentence was what it was referring to - it means that before the son left home, he didn't like everything, but when he left home, he missed it. Whereas I was thinking he was referring to the unhappy time away from home.

I still don't understand the first sentence. I get as far as you do, but it doesn't make sense to me.

Margaret

So the first sentence means it's nothing but tidying the room.

Yes, that's the only thing it can mean.

Is this kind of construction common? It wouldn't be normal in English to say 'Apart from cleaning, there was only cleaning'.

It seems that I first heard of 除了工作 还是工作 in a song.

Q: Apart from working, what do you do?
A: Nothing.
Can "nothing" means "not doing anything" or rest?

Q: 除了工作 您还做什么？
A: 工作。
This implies no rest.

I see Google is familiar with that usage!

Thanks, I know enough now. I think this sentence is out of place in a beginners' book. But the series is really useful, and it's surprising what they can write with such a small vocabulary.

Oh, I was replying to the song reference. I don't really understand the last message, but never mind.

I'm less worried about what it specifically means than about the fact that I can't find the expression in dictionaries, but of course I can't read Chinese on the Web yet, and I suspect that would help.

Zeppa, You talked about what the mother is doing after the son has left. If she has spent the entire day cleaning the room than this sentence is perfect. It just means that the mother did nothing but clean the son's room. Don't think about it as a literal translation, but rather the author using this pattern to stress how much the mother was cleaning, the pattern (and the repetition) is just the best way to express the concept here and with a limited amount of words.

I think the benefit of bring up this kind of pattern in a book like the one you're reading is you can spend time focusing on the pattern rather than all of the vocab that you don't understand.

Speaking of vocab, I've never seen 收悉 used like in the first sentence and couldn't find it in the dictionary. Are you sure it wasn't 收拾?

@Junglegirl: yes, sorry - that was sloppy entering by me.

@SkritterJake
Well, what I really wanted was to see another example of the same usage, which pts actually gave me.
I do legal translations from German to English and I am used to finding everything I need in German and English, and I would like to be able to find it in Chinese too, but until I recover more characters I am limited. These books seem ideal to me for private study rather than class use. I have focused on the pattern many times, but until I believe it could be used as a pattern, it doesn't really help!

jukuu is very good for checking out word usage. jukuu.com

to see how it works, go to jukuu.com and enter 没有它不行 in the box.

Thanks, podster, have bookmarked.

I am new to Chinese, so just a guess...

"There is only one thing I hate more than soup, and that is soup." I think if you read that in English, you would certainly get the impression that the author hated soup.

So with;
"Apart from cleaning, there was only cleaning."

You get a strong impression that all there was cleaning. Maybe it is analogous, it is a deliberate nonsense to emphasize a point.

I asked my Chinese teacher and she said this is a standard expression. For example, 他除了吃还是吃 means something like 'He only ever thinks about eating'.