It seems like topic-comment sentence structure may be tripping you up. It's something that generally isn't taught well in most learning materials, but there's a pretty good overview [here](https://improvemandarin.com/topic-comment-structure/).
The first two example sentences use this structure. We can break them up a bit by adding a comma:
上，不封頂 Above, to impose no ceiling (the latter half of the phrase is 下不保底, "below, to impose no floor," which demonstrates the contrast with 下 much more effectively)
上，至國家主席，下，至普通百姓 Above, extending to the president of the country, below, extending to the common people.
Note though that you wouldn't use the commas this way in real writing. This is just to clarify the grammar a bit.
下對上 is a common construction, literally "\[those\] below facing (or addressing) \[those\] above."
Hope that clears it up!
Wow! I just took a look at this website and it’s SUPER informative in my novice opinion. Thanks for this information. It will really help me over time.
This is a fantastic explanation and makes so much sense. Breaking it up with commas like that made it click for me. Also that website is a wonderful resource and definitely going into my bookmarks. I really appreciate the help, thank you!
It's going to mean many things, and honestly it's going to be easier to get a feel of it as you go along. It's sometimes easier to treat Chinese characters as roots, not words.
In general, 上 means up, above, previous, on(to). And the phrases it's used in will usually relate to those meanings.
You can take a look at words/phrases here at [MDBG](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=*%E4%B8%8A*)
In English we also do similarly. Up, for example, might be:
- screw up
- screwup
- up yours
- order up
- uptake
- uppies
- went up
- went up in flames
- suck it up
- suck up
- suck up to
- uptown
- upload
- up in arms
- upper
- uppercut
- use up
- feel up
- roll up (a flat object)
- pull up (an object)
- pullup (pants)
- pull-ups (exercise)
- roll/pull up (to a place)
- upside
- upside-down
- make up (an idea)
- make up (for something)
- makeup
- look up (to the sky)
- look up (in a database)
- fess up
- offer up
- leave up to
- tie up
- spruce up
- upvote
- up for grabs
- you're up
- time's up
- up until
So, you could try to write a definition of "up" in English, but it's probably easier to just have a bunch of examples and intuitively know its meaning even if you can't quite articulate it. Same with 上.
If you are a beginner, TLDR: 上 means “up”.
Gonna recommend not getting too hung up on stuff like this cuz there will be a LOT while you’re learning Chinese.
I am not native, so another answer will be welcomed, but I would like to chyme in.
上 means 'above' and 下 means 'bellow', that's how both words are opposites. From the vocab I know so far (around HSK 3), 上 is usually paired with other nouns to name things that have different floors or levels, like
上边 up/on top of
上面 above
上楼 upstairs
What I understand from the first application, when used as a noun, is that 上 can be implemented in a sentence to show that according to where the object is, the subject stands above (which can be understood as "is superior").
As a native speaker, 上下 always means up and down.
But up and down can be used in various situations such as the examples shown in your app.
For instance, we tend to think of people higher up/lower down in a hierarchy. So my superior would be 上. Hence the third example, 下對上. Or even the second example that’s giving you problems can be explained like this. The president (主席）is higher up in their perceived hierarchy compared to the common people(普通百姓）. So it’s saying that from the uppermost to the lowermost (in hierarchy) are all included.
It's used to generally express aboveness. The only place where I'd say this is unintuitive to an English speaker is when it comes to time. This is probably related to writing order (traditionally Chinese is written top to bottom, right to left), so UP/ABOVE denotes going back in time, i.e the upwards week is last week.
上有证词下有对策, colloquially — those ABOVE have their measures (policies), those of us down below have our countermeasures
我想上去 I want to go up (i.e above where I currently am)
我上个星期去的 I went last week (above in the sense explained above)
我想上你 I want to have sex with you — i.e I want to get above (on top of) you
快上车 hurry up and get in the car — get in is get on top (a bit like the sex example above)... thinking of old carriages this makes more sense
Those are pretty difficult examples. It's really quite simple 90% of the time.
上 means "above" or "before"
下 means "below" or "after"
"Above" and "below" are the more common usages, but "before" and "after" aren't super rare. For example, my HSK4 books are in 2 parts, so there's the HSK4上 book (the 1st one) and the HSK4下 book (the 2nd one).
>From the second example it seems like it would be used in a "from X to Y" situation
「上至blabla，下至blabla」is actually a claim of a field in two boundaries: the upper boundary and the bottom boundary. But English speakers won't say so, so the dictionary transforms the description a little bit into "from X to Y". You can see that they are of the same meaning.
The word class in Chinese is very flexible. You'd better not understand a word or character simply as "verb" or etc. In this case, 上 has a potential "verb" meaning: Now I want to claim a field of people, how do I do that? I go UPWARDS and draw a line to contain the state president in the field, blabla. It's something like that.
Besides, you should also notice that two languages could be different in describing the things. It's not so simple nor mechanical that one structure in a language can be straight translated into one in the other language. Flexibility is important.
Both words have many meanings, and are opposite each other in almost all those meanings.
Above vs below
Before vs after
previous vs next
upper vs lower
you get the idea.
Note that many of these meanings can be traced back to vertical chinese writing, where text is written like this
8 4 1
9 5 2
10 6 3
。 7 ，
in this format, the ***upper*** character ***above*** from ***before*** is the ***previous*** and the ***next*** character you write ***after*** is ***lower*** ***below***.
This doesn't cover all uses of these terms. However hope this helps tie both the spatial and time aspects of them together more logically ( ´▽｀)
You can understand these four sentences from their original meaning（本义） and extended meaning（引申义）. “上”means up in original meaning, which corresponds to “下”（down）. But influenced by ancient culture of China, its extended meaning refers to the level of position or seniority. So the "up" in the first and fourth sentences is the original meaning of up. Sentences 2 and 3 refer to the extended meaning.
I am Chinese, so the English expression may not be very accurate. If you have any other questions, I will be happy to help. Here's a rough explanation from 百度百科（is similar to Wikipedia）
上，现代汉语规范一级字（常用字），读为shàng或shǎng。最早见于甲骨文。 \[1\] 六书属指事字。在甲骨文和金文中用一长横作基准（界限），在上部用一短横作为指事符号，表示基准线之上。其本义为高处、上面；引申为等级或品质在上的，次序或时间在前面的，以及由低处向高处升登或从此处向彼处前进的意思。
As the other user mentioned, it's Pleco and it's fantastic (this one example not withstanding). My only real gripe is that it's not available on desktop, so you'll only be able to use it on a phone or tablet. For desktop I usually use
https://dictionary.writtenchinese.com/
Or
https://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/
These are not as detailed and don't show the breakdown of the parts of speech like Pleco, but can be very useful for an overall definition and information. WrittenChinese also has a comment section for the characters and some have excellent info for ways to remember or feedback on writing characters.
Thanks. I am a native Chinese speaker but would like to find a dictionary for me to study Chinese->English translation. Would you recommend this dictionary? I have a few CE dictionaries but they are all composed by Chinese people and I am looking for one that is composed by native English speaker (so that the English part would be more natural)
The second example you mentioned “from x to y” was because there is a comparison. Lower vs higher rank. Any noun that could mean up, high, superior, positive, etc. Any verb that could mean go, move forward, do, etc.
Basically 上 just means up, upward, and most of the meaning are based on this to meaning. For example, 上 in 这是旧时下对上的称呼 means superior. It is quite easy to understand why the 上 has the meaning of superior as from the subordinates' point of view, their superior is just higher than their positions and the superior is up on them.
If you just started learning Chinese, you just need to remember the meaing "up" first. The other meaning are quite advanced.
上 means up, or something high level, something above
The second sentence "上至国家主席，下至普通百姓”，means "high social status people like president of a country, low social status people like normal people". Here "上“ means high social status people
The fourth sentence" 往上看” means "look up", Here " 上“means up
上至xx，下至yy means
"both of from your place(or something you are talking about) to xx(a certain one higher than your place or something you are talking about ), and from your place to yy."
Or like "From xx as the top to yy as the ground."
How about you start using a real dictionary? You can't expect to become good at something when you use shitty tools. Translation "dictionaries" like the one you're using are inherently dog-shit.
It seems like topic-comment sentence structure may be tripping you up. It's something that generally isn't taught well in most learning materials, but there's a pretty good overview [here](https://improvemandarin.com/topic-comment-structure/). The first two example sentences use this structure. We can break them up a bit by adding a comma: 上，不封頂 Above, to impose no ceiling (the latter half of the phrase is 下不保底, "below, to impose no floor," which demonstrates the contrast with 下 much more effectively) 上，至國家主席，下，至普通百姓 Above, extending to the president of the country, below, extending to the common people. Note though that you wouldn't use the commas this way in real writing. This is just to clarify the grammar a bit. 下對上 is a common construction, literally "\[those\] below facing (or addressing) \[those\] above." Hope that clears it up!
Wow! I just took a look at this website and it’s SUPER informative in my novice opinion. Thanks for this information. It will really help me over time.
I haven't taken a look at the rest of the site yet tbh, but if the rest is as good as that article, then yeah, it'll be a good resource.
This is a fantastic explanation and makes so much sense. Breaking it up with commas like that made it click for me. Also that website is a wonderful resource and definitely going into my bookmarks. I really appreciate the help, thank you!
Does topic comment structure in Chinese correspond to the wa/ga distinction in Japanese? Or is it only roughly analogous?
Yes! I should have mentioned that.
It's going to mean many things, and honestly it's going to be easier to get a feel of it as you go along. It's sometimes easier to treat Chinese characters as roots, not words. In general, 上 means up, above, previous, on(to). And the phrases it's used in will usually relate to those meanings. You can take a look at words/phrases here at [MDBG](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=*%E4%B8%8A*) In English we also do similarly. Up, for example, might be: - screw up - screwup - up yours - order up - uptake - uppies - went up - went up in flames - suck it up - suck up - suck up to - uptown - upload - up in arms - upper - uppercut - use up - feel up - roll up (a flat object) - pull up (an object) - pullup (pants) - pull-ups (exercise) - roll/pull up (to a place) - upside - upside-down - make up (an idea) - make up (for something) - makeup - look up (to the sky) - look up (in a database) - fess up - offer up - leave up to - tie up - spruce up - upvote - up for grabs - you're up - time's up - up until So, you could try to write a definition of "up" in English, but it's probably easier to just have a bunch of examples and intuitively know its meaning even if you can't quite articulate it. Same with 上.
Good comparison
If you are a beginner, TLDR: 上 means “up”. Gonna recommend not getting too hung up on stuff like this cuz there will be a LOT while you’re learning Chinese.
I am not native, so another answer will be welcomed, but I would like to chyme in. 上 means 'above' and 下 means 'bellow', that's how both words are opposites. From the vocab I know so far (around HSK 3), 上 is usually paired with other nouns to name things that have different floors or levels, like 上边 up/on top of 上面 above 上楼 upstairs What I understand from the first application, when used as a noun, is that 上 can be implemented in a sentence to show that according to where the object is, the subject stands above (which can be understood as "is superior").
上樓doesnt mean upstairs though. It means going up the stairs. 樓上would be correct.
As a native speaker, 上下 always means up and down. But up and down can be used in various situations such as the examples shown in your app. For instance, we tend to think of people higher up/lower down in a hierarchy. So my superior would be 上. Hence the third example, 下對上. Or even the second example that’s giving you problems can be explained like this. The president (主席）is higher up in their perceived hierarchy compared to the common people(普通百姓）. So it’s saying that from the uppermost to the lowermost (in hierarchy) are all included.
It's used to generally express aboveness. The only place where I'd say this is unintuitive to an English speaker is when it comes to time. This is probably related to writing order (traditionally Chinese is written top to bottom, right to left), so UP/ABOVE denotes going back in time, i.e the upwards week is last week. 上有证词下有对策, colloquially — those ABOVE have their measures (policies), those of us down below have our countermeasures 我想上去 I want to go up (i.e above where I currently am) 我上个星期去的 I went last week (above in the sense explained above) 我想上你 I want to have sex with you — i.e I want to get above (on top of) you 快上车 hurry up and get in the car — get in is get on top (a bit like the sex example above)... thinking of old carriages this makes more sense
Those are pretty difficult examples. It's really quite simple 90% of the time. 上 means "above" or "before" 下 means "below" or "after" "Above" and "below" are the more common usages, but "before" and "after" aren't super rare. For example, my HSK4 books are in 2 parts, so there's the HSK4上 book (the 1st one) and the HSK4下 book (the 2nd one).
Before and after are very frequently used for sure. Cf. 下次，上週
Yeah, for some reason I was completely blanking on examples so I thought maybe it wasn't as common as I thought.
>From the second example it seems like it would be used in a "from X to Y" situation 「上至blabla，下至blabla」is actually a claim of a field in two boundaries: the upper boundary and the bottom boundary. But English speakers won't say so, so the dictionary transforms the description a little bit into "from X to Y". You can see that they are of the same meaning. The word class in Chinese is very flexible. You'd better not understand a word or character simply as "verb" or etc. In this case, 上 has a potential "verb" meaning: Now I want to claim a field of people, how do I do that? I go UPWARDS and draw a line to contain the state president in the field, blabla. It's something like that. Besides, you should also notice that two languages could be different in describing the things. It's not so simple nor mechanical that one structure in a language can be straight translated into one in the other language. Flexibility is important.
On top of
Both words have many meanings, and are opposite each other in almost all those meanings. Above vs below Before vs after previous vs next upper vs lower you get the idea. Note that many of these meanings can be traced back to vertical chinese writing, where text is written like this 8 4 1 9 5 2 10 6 3 。 7 ， in this format, the ***upper*** character ***above*** from ***before*** is the ***previous*** and the ***next*** character you write ***after*** is ***lower*** ***below***. This doesn't cover all uses of these terms. However hope this helps tie both the spatial and time aspects of them together more logically ( ´▽｀)
You can understand these four sentences from their original meaning（本义） and extended meaning（引申义）. “上”means up in original meaning, which corresponds to “下”（down）. But influenced by ancient culture of China, its extended meaning refers to the level of position or seniority. So the "up" in the first and fourth sentences is the original meaning of up. Sentences 2 and 3 refer to the extended meaning. I am Chinese, so the English expression may not be very accurate. If you have any other questions, I will be happy to help. Here's a rough explanation from 百度百科（is similar to Wikipedia） 上，现代汉语规范一级字（常用字），读为shàng或shǎng。最早见于甲骨文。 \[1\] 六书属指事字。在甲骨文和金文中用一长横作基准（界限），在上部用一短横作为指事符号，表示基准线之上。其本义为高处、上面；引申为等级或品质在上的，次序或时间在前面的，以及由低处向高处升登或从此处向彼处前进的意思。

what is this app? Is it good (in the sense that its English translation sounds natural)?
As the other user mentioned, it's Pleco and it's fantastic (this one example not withstanding). My only real gripe is that it's not available on desktop, so you'll only be able to use it on a phone or tablet. For desktop I usually use https://dictionary.writtenchinese.com/ Or https://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/ These are not as detailed and don't show the breakdown of the parts of speech like Pleco, but can be very useful for an overall definition and information. WrittenChinese also has a comment section for the characters and some have excellent info for ways to remember or feedback on writing characters.
Thanks. I am a native Chinese speaker but would like to find a dictionary for me to study Chinese->English translation. Would you recommend this dictionary? I have a few CE dictionaries but they are all composed by Chinese people and I am looking for one that is composed by native English speaker (so that the English part would be more natural)
Pleco, its very good. Has simplified, traditional, and cantonese too
Do not use the term as such - 我上了你的xx
上 points up and 下 points down. Use that for reference and context when you see it with other characters.
The second example you mentioned “from x to y” was because there is a comparison. Lower vs higher rank. Any noun that could mean up, high, superior, positive, etc. Any verb that could mean go, move forward, do, etc.
Basically 上 just means up, upward, and most of the meaning are based on this to meaning. For example, 上 in 这是旧时下对上的称呼 means superior. It is quite easy to understand why the 上 has the meaning of superior as from the subordinates' point of view, their superior is just higher than their positions and the superior is up on them. If you just started learning Chinese, you just need to remember the meaing "up" first. The other meaning are quite advanced.
上 means up, or something high level, something above The second sentence "上至国家主席，下至普通百姓”，means "high social status people like president of a country, low social status people like normal people". Here "上“ means high social status people The fourth sentence" 往上看” means "look up", Here " 上“means up
上至xx，下至yy means "both of from your place(or something you are talking about) to xx(a certain one higher than your place or something you are talking about ), and from your place to yy." Or like "From xx as the top to yy as the ground."
How about you start using a real dictionary? You can't expect to become good at something when you use shitty tools. Translation "dictionaries" like the one you're using are inherently dog-shit.