I’m having a bit of confusion regarding the use of ele, vs e to state whether or not you’re hungry…
If it prompts me with ‘Hungry’ - I answer ‘e’ but that’s incorrect apparently and ‘ele’ is the correct answer, but if it says ‘I’m very hungry’ the answer is ‘wo hen e’
Why is there a difference? I asked a friend of mine and he said you would just say e, for hungry and not ‘ele’, unless you were saying wo ele, where you’re stating that at that moment you are hungry. Which already made perfect sense to me and didn’t strike me as off.
Hmm… if the prompt was simply “hungry”, I’d say 饿 (“è”) is just as valid as 饿了(e le). I’ve never really thought about why there is a difference. That being said, my English is much stronger than my Chinese, even though I’m a native speaker of both.
If I were trying to say “I’m hungry”, then I’d say 我饿了 (wo e le). 我饿 (wo e) sounds wrong by itself; the sentence doesn’t seem complete.
For “I’m very hungry”, I would say 我很饿 (wo hen e), but adding the 了is also fine.
It kind of depends on the context. If you were making a statement to indicate that you are very hungry, then it’s likely that you would add the 了.
“我很饿” seems to be more of a reply to a question, like if someone asked: 为什么你叫了三碗面？ (Why did you order three bowls of noodles?)
Then you’d reply: 因为我很饿。(Because I’m very hungry.)
Someone else actually just asked this question a few days ago. I think it may not be the easiest thing to wrap your head around when you’re first starting in Chinese
Anyway, le is a particle that can mean that the status of something has changed.
Saying wǒ è le means something like “I’m hungry (now, but I wasn’t before),” whereas wǒ hěn è means “I’m very hungry,” without implying that you weren’t hungry before.
