有的 / 没的 + verb

Today’s tip is about a structure often heard in colloquial Chinese, but not too often written about ever. The pattern is as follows:

subject + 有 / 没 + 的 + action verb*

‘there’s a lot [有] / nothing [没] for + subject + to + verb’

* by action verb, I mean a verb that indicates an action like do, speak etc. and not a state like 知道 know, 想 think, 感到 feel etc.

* note also that 没的 cannot be lengthened to 没有的 in the way that 没 can usually be considered a short form of 没有

Whilst you may already be familiar with the use of 有的 as meaning ‘(have) some’ when followed by a noun e.g. 有的学生不太感兴趣 ‘Some of the students / there were some students that weren’t interested’, this use is slightly different – though you may like to think of it as an extension of this meaning of ‘have some’. If you think about what 有的 + verb literally means, it’s something like ‘there’s something to verb’. Slightly ‘playing up’ this meaning, we get to the meaning of ‘there’s a lot to verb’. Similarly, we can see by analogy how 没的 could be the opposite of 有的 and mean something like ‘there is not some’ i.e. ‘not any’ and so 没的 + verb would mean ‘there’s nothing to verb’.

Here’s some examples:

(1) 她们很久没见，肯定有的聊。 ‘They haven’t seen each other for a long time, so certainly have a lot to talk about.’

(2) 最近公司经常让我加班，所以这个周末没的休息了。 ‘Lately, my work has often been asking me to work overtime, so I won’t be getting any rest this weekend.’

(3) 老师看到我们这副没的做的样子就给我们加了任务。 ‘Seeing us looking like we had nothing to do, the teacher gave us extra tasks to complete.’

(4) 朋友都准备带零食，所以今晚有的吃了！ ‘My friends are all preparing to bring snacks, so there’ll be lots to eat tonight!’

(5) 对于他的具体病情，我不太懂，但是我知道这种病通常是没的救的。 ‘Even though I don’t understand many of the details about his condition, I do know that someone with this kind of disease is usually unsaveable.’

No doubt, there’s something about this pattern that seems instantly ‘unfamiliar’ and unusual – we aren’t used to seeing 有的 followed by a verb, and even less so 没 + 的. The reason for this apparent ‘foreign-ness’ is that this structure is in fact quite a ‘dialect’ form of expression (and, as we know, in the Chinese-speaking world, ‘dialect’ usually means ‘more country-style’, which in turn means ‘more colloquial’). It reminds me of 四川 dialect (四川话), in which I’ve heard 没有 is pronounced as 没的 mo-de, but in Mandarin, we know that 的 tends to make things ‘noun-y’, so that’s where the meaning of ‘a lot of’ / ‘noTHING’ comes from. Anyhow, this is definitely one you can use when talking to your friends and in general casual conversation.

Before I sign off, there’s a related structure that I want to include in this explanation. I guess you could probably actually say it’s the same structure as the above, but only used with 是 – a state verb, rather than an action verb. The meaning is ‘a lot of + noun’, acting similar to determiners like 很多、不少 that go before a noun, rather than having such a strong connection with the verb, as in the examples above. This form of the ‘有的 / 没的 structure’ only ever occurs with 有的 and never with 没的. It can be ordered in 1 of 2 ways:

(i) something + 有的 + 是

‘there’s a lot / plenty of + something’

(ii) (subject) + 有的 + 是 + something

‘there’s a lot of / plenty of + something + somewhere / with someone’

Some examples:

(1) 不用担心，钱有的是！ ‘Don’t worry, (we) have loads of money!’

(2) 不用担心，我们有的是钱！ ‘Don’t worry, if there’s one thing we’re not short of, it’s money!’

(3) 这里有的是机会。 ‘There’s loads of opportunities here.’

(4) 比我漂亮的女生有的是。 ‘There’s plenty of other girls that are more pretty than me.’

Give these a try! 🙂

–A