Mandarin reading practice 5: 一点儿也

So yesterday's lesson seemed to be a difficult one for everyone to grasp... and it ended with an argument (my Mandarin classes are less than pleasant but that's for another blog post!), so I thought I'd blog what I had learnt! One of the sentence structures we learnt last night was "not even a little". These kind of sentences start with 一点儿也 followed by a negative action. For example:

我一点儿也不饿
Wo yi diar ye bu e
I'm not even a little hungry

我一点儿也没喝东西
Wo yi diar ye mei he dong xi
I haven't drunk a single thing

To make a sentence more specific you can use 一 followed by a measure word and a noun: 一 (measure word)(noun)也
我一本书也没买了
Wo yi ben shu ye mei mai le
I haven't bought a single book

我一瓶啤酒也没喝了
Wo yi ping pi jiu ye mei he le
I haven't drunk a single beer

One of the other causes of confusion was when to use which negative word, 不 (bu) and 没 (mei). The way I understood it was to use bu when you did not do something, mei when you have not done something. Bu is a lot stronger negative word to use, for example:

我一点儿也不买东西
Wo yi diar ye bu mai dong xi
I don't (want to) buy a single thing

我一点儿也没买东西
Wo yi diar ye mei mai dong xi
I haven't bought a single thing

There are also certain times when using bu or mei would change the meaning of the sentence:

我一瓶啤酒也不喝
Wo yi ping pi jiu ye bu he
I don't drink a single beer

我一瓶啤酒也没喝
wo yi ping pi jiu ye mei he
I haven't drunk a single beer

So hope that clarifies "a little bit" sentences! I just hope I can remember to use them!

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