**Daily Word: "麻煩" (Trouble)**

Today's daily word is "麻煩," and through this word, I want to introduce another Chinese word's unique syntactic properties and the indeterminacy of syntactic components.

"麻煩" directly translates to English as "trouble." The most straightforward usage is as a noun, for example:

小明惹了一個麻煩，現在整天跑法院。

Xiao Ming got into trouble and now must go to court daily.

大華碰上了一個大麻煩，不知道找誰幫忙。

Da Hua encountered a big problem and needed to figure out who to ask for help.

Here, "麻煩" refers to a bothersome and time-consuming issue. The verb used here is "惹" (to provoke), but sometimes we can also use the verb plus complement "碰上" (to run into). A standard modifier is "大" (significant), as in "大麻煩" (big trouble).

"麻煩" can also be used as a verb, meaning to politely ask someone to handle something, indicating that the task might be challenging and cause inconvenience to the other person. For example:

下星期的簡報就麻煩你了。

I'll trouble you with next week's presentation.

九月我兒子去日本唸書，就多麻煩您照顧了。

My son will study in Japan in September, so I will trouble you to look after him.

In these two examples, "麻煩" is used as a verb.

Lastly, "麻煩" can be used as a state verb (also an adjective), functioning as an attributive to modify a noun or as a predicate to describe a characteristic. For example:

這是個很麻煩的專案，大家討論了一個星期，還沒有結論。

This is a very troublesome project; everyone has been discussing it for a week, and it still has not been concluded.

這個當機的問題很麻煩，可能需要從總部請工程師來處理。

This system crash is very troublesome and may require an engineer from headquarters to fix it.

From the above examples, we can see a unique feature of Chinese: the part of speech of a word and its function in syntax are entirely indeterminate, depending on its position in the sentence and the speaker's intended meaning. This is quite different from Indo-European languages or Japanese and often confuses learners, who need to learn to memorise or use it.

The learning recommendation here is that learners should first master the verb usage, as the central axis of Chinese is the verb. Essentially, the nominalisation of a verb is the verb itself. As for the attributive or predicative modification, in many cases, just adding "的" (de) makes it easier to understand (though it doesn't guarantee correctness). Therefore, learners should grasp the verb usage and be able to present various tenses correctly.

每日一詞：「麻煩」

今天的每日一詞要介紹「麻煩」，並藉由麻煩這個詞，我要介紹另一個華語詞在句法學中的特殊性質，及句法成分的不定性。

「麻煩」，直譯成英文是”trouble”，最簡單的用法是作為名詞，例如：

小明惹了一個麻煩，現在整天跑法院。

大華碰上了一個大麻煩，不知道找誰幫忙。

這裡的麻煩指的就是一件讓人勞心勞力，需要花很多時間處理的問題。這邊的動詞使用的是「惹」，我們有時候也可以使用動詞加補語「碰上」。而常用的修飾是「大」，如「大麻煩」

「麻煩」還可以作為動詞，這邊的意思是請託別人處理某件事情的禮貌講法，表示這件事情可能不容易處理，可能會對對方造成困擾，所以使用「麻煩」，例如：

下星期的簡報就麻煩你了。

九月我兒子去日本唸書，就多麻煩您照顧了。

這裡的兩個例子都是當作動詞使用。

最後，麻煩還可以當作狀態動詞（也就是形容詞），可以當「定語」使用，用來修飾名詞，或當作述語，用來描述特徵。如：

這是個很麻煩的專案，大家討論了一個星期，還沒有結論。

這個當機的問題很麻煩，可能需要從總部請工程師來處理。

從以上幾個例子我們可以看到華語的一個特性，即一個詞的詞性跟在句法中的功能完全不固定，取決於他在句子中的位置與說話者所要表達的意思。這跟印歐語言或日語都不太一樣，常常造成學習者的困擾，不知道要如何記憶、如何使用？

這邊的學習建議是，希望學習者還是先掌握動詞的用法，因為華語的主軸是動詞，而基本上動詞的名詞化就是動詞本身。至於當作定語或是述語的修飾狀況，很多時候只要加上「的」就不太容易聽不懂（但不保證正確）。所以請各位學習者，一定要把握動詞的用法，並能正確呈現各種時態。