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I wanted to write "I have lost my camera", and looked this up on google translate, which gave 我失去了我的相机.

Google translte also gives 丢失 as equivalent to 失去 and meaning 'to lose'. So I suppose one could also write 我丢失了我的相机.

This sentence structure is very similar to English, so would be easy to use. However looking on line dictionary, there were no such example sentences of the same form expressing loss. Instead there was 我把钥匙丢了, as in 'I lost my keys', so I presume from this we would say 我把相机丢了. Looking at the definition of 把, it seems this means more like 'I have lost hold of my keys', or more literally 'my hold on my keys is gone'.

Which might be the more natural way to say this, if both are acceptable?

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  • consult grammar on "把 sentence"("把"句子) which is a basic (fundamental) Chinese language construction, more examples at jukuu
    – user6065
    Sep 1, 2017 at 16:31
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    Please read this thread about 把 chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/3481/…
    – Tang Ho
    Sep 1, 2017 at 16:47

2 Answers 2

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我丢失了我的相机 is the formal way to say I lost my camera, whilst 我把相机丢了 or 我把相机弄丢了 is more colloquial.

There are some differences between 丢失 and 失去.

丢失 means you lost something.

失去 means you can not keep something precious(often abstract things, like your love, someone's trust and kindness, etc.) any more because of some reason behind. For example, 你失去了你的爱人,meaning you can not get the hold of your lover. There should be some reason why she left you. It might be she wouldn't love you any more.

In short, 丢失 means you lost something you don't know where it has gone, whilst 失去 most of time you know where it has gone and also the reason why.

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  • The usage of 把 in your example seems odd to me, because the sentence is really short and the camera doesn't need extra emphasis. However, looking it up in "刘月华:实用现代汉语语法", I found that you are correct, and that 把 is used in short sentences, but only with specific verbs (including 丢).
    – Philipp
    Sep 3, 2017 at 8:12
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我的钥匙/照相机丢了。 I've lost my keys/camera.

我弄丢了我的钥匙/照相机。 I've lost my keys/camera.

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