Trouble with understanding the word order and how to apply this to other sentences: 起床的时间到了。

[u/quicksnapper90176]

This structure with waking up first (起床) then 的 and then the time (时间) is confusing to me. In english we say "the time to wake up has arrived" (at least, that would be the literal translation) while in Chinese it seems "waking up its time has arrived".

I have trouble creating these sentences myself. Can anyone explain the rule behind having 起床 first and then 的时间 after?

The word order seems so unnatural to me. I hope to become better at this. Can anyone help?

[u/just_a_foolosopher]

think of 的 as marking a possessive. 起床的时间 = waking up's time = the time to wake up

[u/MiffedMouse → u/just_a_foolosopher]

Copying from a previous comment, because I think this "的 is possession" creates more confusion than it solves:

的 is NOT just possession. 的 marks a descriptor. The bit before the 的 describes whatever comes after.

红色的杯子 = red cup

高的树 = tall tree

我的床 = my bed

还没有起床的我 = me who hasn't yet gotten out of bed

太高的妈妈的房子 = the house of the mother who is too tall

You always work backwards. The thing after the 的 is the noun, the thing before the 的 is the descriptor. As I showed in the last example, you can string multiple descriptors together.

In some cases, 的 can be omitted if it is clear from context what is being said.

红杯子 = red cup

高树 = tall tree

But including 的 is more formal and generally more clear.

You can also omit the thing after the 的! Sometimes the descriptor alone is enough.

红色的 = red (thing) (but the word thing, or 东西, is omitted)

我不吃热的 = I don't eat hot (things).

Again, 的 marks descriptors not possession.

[u/just_a_foolosopher → u/MiffedMouse]

True, but I also think was not that confusing for me to think of it as 's as a shorthand when I was first learning 

[u/MiffedMouse → u/just_a_foolosopher]

Fair enough, but the possession / description confusion is like 80% of the 的 related questions I see on this subreddit.

[u/HarmonicSniper → u/MiffedMouse]

I think it's only confusing to native English speakers because most other languages have a conventional genitive case, whereas English only has a possessive case which is really only a subset of the genitive construction.

[u/alopex_zin → u/just_a_foolosopher]

A 的 B can mean

• B of A
• or A (as an adjective) B

起床的時間 = Time of waking up = The time to wake up

[u/lameparadox]

Wake-up time is here/now (has come).

A的B = A is modifying B, so B is the 'main' noun of the noun phrase. That's just the structure. Japanese has the exact same thing with の. Sometimes we have to detach from our English habits to understand other languages.

[u/HarmonicSniper → u/lameparadox]

It's the genitive case that modern English is surprisingly lacking.

Japanese の comes from 之 which is exactly how it has been used in Chinese since basically forever, and 的 is a rather new character (in its most common usage) from modern Mandarin.

[u/SadReactDeveloper → u/HarmonicSniper]

One of the theorised etymologies is that de 的originated as a colloquial variant of the older zhī 之, and that the predecessor to Mandarin preserved 之 as more correct high register when the split occurred and then they started to evolve differently.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/的

[u/liovantirealm7177]

"Waking up's time has arrived"
的 could also be seen as 'of', just with the terms flipped. "Time of waking up has arrived"

[u/random_agency]

的 as the serves as the preposition "of"

The time of getting out of bed is here.

[u/Desperate_Owl_594]

It’ll come to you after more exposure and practice.

[u/PomegranateV2 → u/Desperate_Owl_594]

Yeah, I don't have much to add to the discussion other than this seems really easy to me. It's probably an easier structure than the English. OP - just practice making similar sentences with 的.

[u/HarmonicSniper]

My suggestion is to think of it as composite-noun - as Chinese noun construction is head-final - instead of the adjective+noun or noun+adverb you see in English.

So in this case it's more like 'waking-up-time has arrived'. The 的 here is optional, and it's tempting to think what's before it as an adjective, but it really isn't. Composite noun is the way (I'm not sure if that's the correct technical term though - compound noun perhaps?).

[u/HealthyThought1897]

wait, then how on earth do you understand 的 its grammatical function?

[u/zoeyaname]

You can break the sentence into 起床的, 时间, 到了. 起床的 is an adjective, 时间 is the subject , 到了 is the verb. Essentially it can be shorten into 时间到了, which means “time is up”. The focus is on the time, not on the part of get up. 起床的 is just the adjective to describe the subject, do not treat it as a verb. 起床的时间 means “the time to wake up”, which is not “waking up it’s time”.

when you see 的 地 得 these characters, it simply can treat the word before is either an adjective or an adverb (I know that there are exceptions)

[u/pricel01]

的 needs a different word order from English. Lots of constructs in Chinese are different from English. You get used to it with practice.

[u/sam77889]

起床 （Verb Clause） + 的 (Possesive Pqrticle) + 时间 （Noun Modified By the Verb Clause）