Sometimes we repeat a word twice, eg. bye bye, bling bling, so so, okie dokie, roly poly, etc. This is called reduplication. It is done for several reasons; one of which is for emphasis.
In Chinese and Japanese, this character 々 is used for the second repeated word. It is not commonly used nor seen nowadays, and I am not sure how to type it under the Chinese pinyin input method.
In my own vocabulary, I tend to use reduplication quite a bit, both in English and Chinese, not really for emphasis purposes, but more so as a baby talk. ^_^ All my stuffed animals have reduplicated names like Jia Jia, Da Da, etc. And in speech, I say yes yes, hi hi, etc.
Do you use much reduplicated words on a daily basis? If so, what words and for what occasion?
I was effectively made to be some dude's walking dictionary, as he said, "I hate dictionaries and textbooks. I want to speak English naturally, not like a textbook!"
I told him that the answers to his questions are in the dictionary. He said, "I thought you have your own understanding [of the words]."
I said, "I learned from the dictionary. If my definitions were very different from the dictionary, would you still want to learn from me?"
Understandably, different people have different learning styles. I guess this method suits his personality, but I wonder how effective it is.
