Breakdown of tā zhōumò chángcháng dài háizi qù kànkan fùmǔ, yìqǐ zài jiā chīfàn liáotiān.
Questions & Answers about tā zhōumò chángcháng dài háizi qù kànkan fùmǔ, yìqǐ zài jiā chīfàn liáotiān.
In Chinese, time expressions often come near the beginning of the sentence, before the verb phrase, to set the time frame:
- 她 周末 常常 带孩子去看看父母…
= She on weekends often takes the kids…
You can move 周末 a bit, but not anywhere:
- ✅ 周末她常常带孩子去看看父母。
- ✅ 她常常在周末带孩子去看看父母。 (using 在周末, “on weekends”)
- ❌ 她带孩子去看看父母周末。 (putting it at the very end sounds wrong)
So the original position (right after the subject 她) is very natural in Chinese.
All three can mean “often”, but there are nuances:
- 常常 – very common in spoken Chinese; sounds natural and slightly more informal.
- 常 – a bit shorter, feels a touch more literary/formal in some contexts, but also used in speech.
- 经常 – also “often”, quite common in both speech and writing; some people feel it can sound slightly more formal or stronger than 常常.
In this sentence, you could say:
- 她周末常带孩子去看看父母…
- 她周末经常带孩子去看看父母…
All are grammatically fine. 常常 just has a very everyday, conversational feel.
带 means “to take/bring someone (or something) somewhere”:
- 带孩子去看看父母 = “take the kids to go see (her) parents”.
If you say:
- 和孩子去看看父母 = “go see (her) parents with the kids”.
That’s understandable, but it focuses on “she and the kids do something together” rather than “she takes the kids (i.e., she brings them along)”.
So:
- 带 emphasizes she is bringing the children.
- 和 emphasizes she and the children go together as a group.
Both can be correct depending on the nuance you want.
Reduplicating many verbs in Chinese (like 看看, 想想, 试试) adds a sense of:
- briefness / lightness, or
- casualness, politeness, friendliness.
看 = “to look / to see / to visit”.
看看 ≈ “have a quick look / go visit (casually)”.
In this sentence:
- 去看看父母 suggests “go visit (her) parents for a bit”, a warm, not-too-formal visit.
If you just said 去看父母, it’s still correct, but sounds a little more neutral or serious.
Here 看 (and 看看) means “to visit (someone)”, not just “look at”:
- 去看医生 = go see the doctor (visit a doctor)
- 去看朋友 = go visit a friend
- 去看看父母 = go visit (her) parents
So the phrase 去看看父母 as a whole is best translated as “go visit her parents”.
Both refer to parents, but tone and context differ:
- 父母 – more neutral, slightly more formal; often used in writing, or when speaking generally about “someone’s parents”.
- 爸爸妈妈 – more colloquial and affectionate; what you’d most naturally call your own parents.
In this sentence, 父母 is like saying “(her) parents” in a neutral way.
You could say:
- 去看看爸妈 (informal, warm: go see Mom and Dad)
- 去看看爸爸妈妈 (also affectionate)
The writer chose 父母 probably to sound neutral/generic.
孩子 literally means “child/children”. With no further context, it usually means her children in this sentence, because:
- 她 is the subject,
- no other possessor is mentioned, and
- Chinese often omits obvious possessives (like “her”, “his”, “my”).
So:
- 带孩子去看看父母 = “take the kids to go visit her parents”
(i.e., her kids, her parents)
If you wanted to spell it out, you could say:
- 带自己的孩子去看看父母 – take her own kids to visit her parents.
去 means “to go” and often appears before another verb of action to show movement:
- 去看 = go (in order) to see / go see
- 去看看父母 = go visit her parents
You can say 带孩子看看父母, and people will understand it as “take the kids to see the parents”, but adding 去:
- makes the movement (“go there”) clearer,
- is very natural when talking about going somewhere to do something.
So:
- 带孩子去看看父母 is slightly more explicit and natural sounding.
了 often marks:
- completed actions, or
- a change of state.
But this sentence describes a habitual action (something that regularly occurs):
- 周末常常带孩子去看看父母 = on weekends she often takes the kids to visit her parents (as a habit).
For habits / routines, Chinese usually does not use 了. Compare:
- 昨天她带孩子去看了父母。
Yesterday she took the kids to see her parents. (one completed event, so 了 fits) - 她周末常常带孩子去看看父母。
On weekends she often takes the kids to visit her parents. (repeated habit – no 了)
So the lack of 了 is exactly what we expect for a habitual statement.
在 marks the location of an action:
- 在家吃饭 = eat at home
- 在家聊天 = chat at home
When two consecutive verbs share the same location, you usually only need 在 once:
- 在家吃饭聊天 = eat and chat at home.
The 在家 applies to both 吃饭 and 聊天.
You could say 在家吃饭，在家聊天, but it’s longer and sounds more repetitive.
The subject is still 她 plus the other relevant people (the kids and parents). In Chinese, if the subject is clear from context, it’s often omitted:
Full version (more explicit):
- 她周末常常带孩子去看看父母，(他们)一起在家吃饭聊天。
On weekends she often takes the kids to visit her parents, and they eat and chat together at home.
Chinese usually drops that 他们 because it’s obvious who is “together” in this context. Our sentence is:
- …去看看父母，一起在家吃饭聊天。
So the missing subject is understood as “they all together”.
Yes, 一起 basically means “together” (doing something with others). Here:
- 一起在家吃饭聊天 = eat and chat together at home.
This implies:
- there is more than one person (she, the kids, the parents), and
- they are performing those actions as a group.
You can also use 一起 earlier:
- 她周末常常带孩子一起去看看父母。
On weekends she often takes the kids to go visit her parents together.
吃饭 literally is “eat rice/meal”, but in modern usage it generally means:
- “to eat / to have a meal”, not specifically rice.
So:
在家吃饭 = have a meal at home.
If you just say 吃, it usually needs an object:- 吃饭 (eat a meal)
- 吃苹果 (eat apples)
In conversational Chinese, 吃饭 is a very standard way to talk about eating meals in general.
聊天 means “to chat / to have a chat”. It is commonly used without an object:
- 我们在咖啡馆聊天。 – We chat in the café.
The person you’re chatting with is often clear from context (the other people present), and the topic can be left unspecified:
- 一起在家吃饭聊天 – eat and chat together at home
→ they’re chatting with each other, about whatever, but you don’t need to specify it.
If you want to be specific, you can say:
- 聊天儿 (northern accent, same meaning)
- 聊天儿说话 (emphasizing “chat and talk”)
- 聊天儿讨论工作 (chat and discuss work), etc.
The Chinese comma ， often separates clauses, sometimes functioning where English would use “and” or “then”. Here:
- …带孩子去看看父母， 一起在家吃饭聊天。
It links two actions in sequence:
- She takes the kids to visit her parents,
- then they eat and chat together at home.
You could think of it as meaning “and then” here, but Chinese usually just uses the comma, without an explicit word like “and”. The relationship (and/then/after that) is understood from context.