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I recently took a Chinese test on EasyMandarin website. One of the question is the following:
明天晚上我___你吃饭。
They ask me to pick up a word that is suitable to the blank area, and I picked up 拿.
However, the correct answer was 请. I found it sounds a better term.
However, is 拿 also suitable here? I meant the sentence is "Tomorrow evening I would take you to eat dinner.".
Is 拿 only used to take a "thing", or can I use it also to take "person"?
I cannot imagine a situation where "拿" would take a human object. Daniel has already explained the etymology of the character, however "拿" not only takes physical objects, but can also be used metaphorically such as in the phrase "拿主意" (to brainstorm), which literally translated means "to grab ideas".
I'd also like to point out that the main reason "拿" would not fit into that sentence is because it cannot be used in the same way "take" would be used in english. It should only be used in a picking-up-and-holding kind of way.
Example sentences that cannot take (heh) "拿"
- I will take the car to work. (you aren't picking up the car)
- I will take a break. (can't really pick up a "break", either)
As a general rule of thumb, anything too big to pick up shouldn't use 拿.
A.N.
To use the word "拿" in that sentence would actually be quite comical. Since "拿" also means "with" as in "to use", it would actually mean "Tomorrow night I will use you to eat dinner". In fact, in the above situation, even if the object was not human, you shouldn't use "拿" at all.
Even if you wished to say: "I will take my purse to dinner", opt for something like "帶", which means "to bring". Otherwise people people might misunderstand it as you are literally using your purse to eat your food.
Yes, 拿 take a thing BY HAND (please look at the glyph, a box on a hand, that is to say, you take a box, 一个 “合” box 放在 “手” 上面), generally, we don't take a man, right?
请 = invite. you can check ancient glyph at http://www.zdic.net ， some characters are Pictographic characters (象形字), you can check ancient glyph of them, some characters are combinations of Pictographic characters (会义字), and others are combinations with phonetic + Pictographic (形声字, one part is phonetic, others are 会义 or 象形).
明天晚上我_请_你吃饭!
The above sentence means that in order to express my gratitude, I treat you to dinner.
The object after 拿 most is thing in Chinese language. If you use the person as an object, it will be very rude.
