要不是有她的话
“If it weren't for her,”
THE DIALOGUE REEL
哎呦呦来
“Oh, come on.”
要不是 有 她 的话
“If it weren't for her,”
或许我还不一定能赢你呢
“I might not have been able to beat you.”
“Don't feel too bad about losing—she was the real decisive factor, not just my skill.”
In Chinese culture, directly boasting about winning can damage social harmony; attributing victory to outside help helps preserve the opponent's face.
LEARNING CHUNKS & PARTICLES
if it were not for
Common counterfactual connective used at the beginning of a clause to introduce a decisive preventing factor.
if; supposing that
Placed at the end of a conditional clause in spoken Mandarin to soften and mark the hypothetical statement.
VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS
Parallel Spoken Cinema Scenes (语义近邻切片)
“if Mr. Sun hadn't arrived in time,”
“If it hadn't been for that incident with Tong,”
“If she hadn't come to me looking for a job back then,”