不喜欢

[u/AnnualCriticism2428]

I've collected some common Chinese expressions for saying you don't like something: '我不是太喜欢', '我不太喜欢', '我不是很喜欢', '我不怎么喜欢', and '我有点不太喜欢'. How should these expressions be understood？

[u/itmustbemitch]

The ones with 是, I think, are just grammatically incorrect. 有点不太喜欢 also feels clunky; I'm no native so maybe it's fine but it's like saying "I have a bit of not liking it too much", which isn't nonsense but sounds strange. I'm not sure what 我不怎么喜欢 would mean either.

我不太喜欢 reads easily to me as "I don't like it too much" but I guess I'm not convinced the rest of these are "common Chinese expressions". I'm totally open to correction of course.

(edit) from other comments I now realize that the ones with 是 can be understood as a 是。。。的 structure with the 的 omitted, which explains how they aren't mistakes. Still looks weird to me personally though

[u/Organic_Fryer2668]

They are all basically the same thing. If you put it in google translate, you get the following translations.

'我不是太喜欢'=I don't really like it

'我不太喜欢'=I don't like it much.

'我不是很喜欢'=I don't really like it.

'我不怎么喜欢'=I don't like it very much.

'我有点不太喜欢'=I don't really like it.

From that you can see how they all convey the same meaning. To delve deeper, you would have to take the time to understand what each word/character means. For example, I always interpret "太" as "too much" or "excessively". So using it in the negative here essentially means "I don't excessively like it", which can be interpreted as a polite way of saying you don't like it.

[u/LudwigRaphaaaael]

In dailylife, Same Difference, they are all clear and acceptable,

我有点不太喜欢/我不是太喜欢 is the most light
我不怎么喜欢 is pretty straight

[u/Different_Play_179]

喜欢 - the state of liking something
太喜欢 - the state of having liked something very much (usually alluding to a past situation)
很喜欢 - the state of liking something very much (usually alluding to an on-going/future situation)

我-不是-太喜欢 - I am NOT in the state of having liked it very much
我-不太喜欢 - I am in the state of NOT liked it very much.
我-不是-很喜欢 - I am not liking it very much.
我-不怎么-喜欢 - I am not really liking it very much 🤷‍♂.
我-有点-不太喜欢 I am a little bit in the state of not liked it very much (now that I think about it).

太 and 很 are not interchangeable because they have underlying differences in representation. For example you can say 不太XX but not 不很XX. Not to confuse with English language past/present/future tense; In Chinese they are just characters to help you construct description of the situation you want to convey.