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Imagine You stand in a queue in a super market and you want to let the person behind you in front of you.

I have tried to translate it these ways:

  • 请,在我前 去 吧 (putting only an adverbial in front of the verb)

  • 请,在我前 吧 (putting an adverbial in front of the verb and an complement after the verb to express the action goes away from me)

  • 请,走得在我前 吧 (putting only an complement after the verb)

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    In most situations, a polite 请 and a gesture will work. Nov 10, 2014 at 19:58

2 Answers 2

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In this situation, I would say "您先请", which works fine.

"您先请" means 'after you', which is very polite.

If you really want to say 'Please, go in front of me' in Chinese, you could say "请走在我前面吧". However, this sounds a little bit strange. Note that you stand in a queue, you don't go in a queue. So "请站在我前面吧" is better.

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  • Or 你先清, of course.
    – imrek
    Nov 10, 2014 at 17:13
  • Or 你先吧 if you want to sound more casual. Nov 11, 2014 at 0:30
  • Sorry for the question, but why should you move the verb before the adverbial? Isn't that right to write the adverbial before the verb?
    – Chiara
    Nov 11, 2014 at 13:49
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    @Chiara Generally we put adv. before v. in Chinese. But you know every general rule in a language usually comes with many exceptions... Sorry I can't come up with a reasonable explanation why we say it in that way, maybe it's just an exception here.
    – Patrick
    Nov 11, 2014 at 15:20
  • But is it completely wrong in this sentence to turn them the other way around?
    – Chiara
    Nov 11, 2014 at 16:30
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您请先 is OK and cool among young generation.

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