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I am student of chinese language, level 1 and I will have to make a presentation about my city. I would truly appreciate your help. The title is "City of students". Could it be translated to "Da xue sheng cheng shi"? And also, to indicate the colours of the city flag is the sentence "Chengshi guoqi de yanse shi hui se he huang se" correct (by any chance)? Thank you so much!

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  • Thank you so much for all your help. I guess I should have explained myself better. The city is an actual town, but since it's university is one of the oldest of Europe and since so many students live in it the town got known as the "city of students". But it is a city. So would it be wrong to maintain: Dàxuéshēng chéngshì (大学生城)? Also, the flag I am trying to describe is the old town's flag, so it seems that "Shì qí de yán sè shì huáng sè hé zǐ sè" is the bets way to translate. Thank you once again. If you ever need help in Portuguese, let me know! :)
    – user13454
    May 17, 2016 at 15:31

4 Answers 4

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For the first part, I think you mean 大学城. Google that and you will see.

Ivan is correct about 市旗. The description, however, could use a bit of polishing. Try 市旗为灰黄二色。

Or, if you are referring to the flag of the 大学城 (if such a thing even exists), since it isn't really a city, you may have to say 大学城的旗帜为灰黄二色。

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  • "city of students" just means a city in which a lot of students live. 大学城 means "university town", like Oxford or something. That's not really the same thing. I don't know if da xue sheng cheng shi would be a better fit, though.
    – KWeiss
    May 17, 2016 at 14:54
  • @KWeiss 大学城 is usually a town-sized area mainly consists of several colleges and many students. I don't know about Oxford but one place comes to my mind is 松江大学城. If it's just a city where lots of students live, then you might want to be explicit and say something like 住着很多大学生的城市.
    – Wang Dingwei
    May 18, 2016 at 3:02
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For the first part, Wang Dingwei is right.

For the second sentence, guoqi(国旗) refers to the national flag. The city flag should be translated to "shiqi"(市旗). I think "shiqi de yanse shi huise he huangse"(市旗的颜色是灰色和黄色) should be right.

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  • would 城市旗帜 instead of 市旗 be possible (for greater clarity, when spoken)?
    – user6065
    May 17, 2016 at 5:13
  • 市旗 is more accurate to express the meaning of "the city flag". Personally, I think 城市旗帜 might refer to all the flags in the city.
    – Ivan Tupolev
    May 17, 2016 at 6:28
  • Anyhow meaning of shi4qi2 clear from context. also anyhow jukuu has an example with 旗帜 meaning a single flag of a city：由上届奥运会主办城市的代表将旗交给国际奥委会主席，再由主席将旗递交本届主办城市的市长，然后将旗帜保存在市府大楼，四年后再送交下届主办城市。
    – user6065
    May 17, 2016 at 7:24
  • With a clear context, you can use 旗帜 to represent 市旗.
    – Ivan Tupolev
    May 17, 2016 at 7:30
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City of students: 学生之城 (xuésheng zhī chéng)

City flag: 市旗为紫黄双色 (shìqí wèi zǐ-huáng shuāng sè)

Notice that words are not split up into morphemes when using pinyin.

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大学生城市
Dàxuéshēng chéngshì
University student city

This is basically 大学生 (dàxuéshēng) = "university student" and 城市 (chéngshì) = "city" stuck together, and it means something like "university student city".

Normally, we'd add the 的 (de) attribute particle (see Structural particle "de"):

大学生的城市
Dàxuéshēng de chéngshì
University student city

In this case, it seems okay to omit the 的, but it's not correct to do so in general.

Could ["City of students"] be translated to "Da xue sheng cheng shi"?

Basically, yes. Examples of it being used are 中国最缺大学生城市 and 大学生城市就业分析 (more examples are found by searching Baidu for "大学生城市").

Also note that when writing pinyin, we group Chinese words together, e.g. "chéngshì" and not "chéng shì". It would be regarded as incorrect to do otherwise.

And as Wang Dingwei points out, there's a more succinct option:

大学城
Dàxué chéng
University city

The next part asks about:

城市国旗的颜色是灰色和黄色
Chéngshì guóqí de yánsè shì huīsè hé huángsè

There's two problems here.

  1. There is a 国 (guó) = "country" in 国旗 (guóqí) = "flag", which is a contradiction with it being a "city flag". I believe it's okay to just delete the 国, but 城市旗 is uncommon.

    It should be 城市旗帜 (chéngshì qízhì) = "city flag" where 旗帜 (qízhì) = "flag" is the longer version of 旗 (qí) = "flag". However, we could use the shorter version 市旗 (shìqí) = "city flag".

  2. Colors like 灰色 (huīsè) = "gray" and 黄色 (huángsè) "yellow" are examples of distinguishing words, and we use the structure

    Subj. + 是 + [Distinguishing Words] + 的

    (source Chinese Grammar Wiki.)

Fixing these gives

市旗的颜色是灰色和黄色的
Shìqí de yánsè shì huīsè hé huángsè de
[The] city flag color is gray and yellow

As I understand, this is grammatical, although we can make it shorter (like in English):

市旗是灰色和黄色的
Shìqí shì huīsè hé huángsè de
[The] city flag is gray and yellow

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