I know somebody who says “我不知懂” (wǒbùzhīdǒng) when she wants to say “I don’t know”. I usually correct her by saying it’s supposed to be “我不知道” (wǒbùzhīdào). Today I did searches on Google to see how many times the respective versions have been used on the internet. Her version has been used 223 times, while mine has been used 7,370,000 times, so I suppose I was correct. Please give me something definitive to end this year-old feud. Thanks.
I never heard “我不知懂”.
我不懂 wo bu dong.
=我不明白 wo bu ming bai.I can’t understand.
我不知道wo bu zhi dao. I don’t know.
Is this person a native speaker of Chinese?
wo ting bu dong我聽不懂
wo bu dong我不懂
wo bu zhi dao我不知道
wo bu zhi qing我不知情…but I don’t know what is wo bu zhi dong.我不知懂
I wasn’t taught this.And never heard of it.
Is this person a native speaker of Chinese?[/quote]
No, she isn’t. In fact “我不知懂” is the only difficult sentence I’ve heard her say. She has also corrected my pronunciation of the French “r”. Judge for yourself if I’m far off: troi
I am native speaker.
But it is the first time I hear people say “zhi dong”.
I don’t know if it is used in China…or it is some local language in China?
[quote=“wisher”]I am native speaker.
But it is the first time I hear people say “zhi dong”.
I don’t know if it is used in China…or it is some local language in China?[/quote]
As a native speaker, I trust that you know what is correct. Remember, the person who said it only knows a few words in Chinese.
Is this person a native speaker of Chinese?[/quote]
No, she isn’t. In fact “我不知懂” is the only difficult sentence I’ve heard her say.[/quote]
I’ve never heard anyone say 我不知懂 (and it sounds wrong to my non-native ears), while 我不知道 is clearly correct and fully idiomatic Mandarin.
btw, if someone says 我不知, this is the probably from the Taiwanese “wa m zai”
the people on the Mainland like to say 看不明白 instead of 看不懂
there is also 我搞不懂
“我不知懂” (wǒbùzhīdǒng) is definitely wrong. End of silly story.
Obviously agree with Dragonbones and the above opinions.
As a matter of interest (if there is any) this is a good example of why Google hits can be misleading at times.
If there are 200-plus hits, you might assume that at least SOME native speakers think this is an okay usage. But if you look at the hits themselves, most of them fall into these categories:
Most numerous are the 不知懂与不懂 (BuZHI plus a phrase “dong yu Bu dong” or “dong fou”, so that the phrase is the object of the “BuZHI”) = does not support the use of “ZHIdong” as a resultative verb;
知与不知、懂 与非懂 (two completely separate items) = does not support use of “ZHIdong”
原以为你最懂却不知懂的人藏在深处 (different meaning, “knowing [that] one understands” rather than “understand” for ZHIdong.
我不知懂车的,所以问问高手门哪款车比较合适? (could be a genuine usage for ZHIdong, but it’s only one among many many many and appears in a forum post, so I’d treat it as an idiolect rather than acceptable.
Not that there was much doubt in my mind on this one, but it’s always interesting to see what folks are up to on the Internet with the whole language evolution thing. In this case, I guess not much. 
Adding to what Ironlady says above, remember that Google also catalogs typos and pure idiocy. 200 hits probably means there are 200 idiots who didn’t know any better. Google any misspelling of a word, like pottao for potato, and see how many hits you get.
Definately!
What is there to fight about?
She is wrong and doesn’t speak Chinese, end of story.
[quote=“lupillus”]What is there to fight about?
She is wrong and doesn’t speak Chinese, end of story.[/quote]
Before reading this thread today, I told her what posters wrote yesterday. She graciously accepted what I said. Fortunately my employer was in earshot and put a few extra rubber stamps onto it. They were flabbergasted that I knew ming bai. Most foreigners don’t know that stuff. 
[quote=“lupillus”]What is there to fight about?
She is wrong and doesn’t speak Chinese, end of story.[/quote]
I’m not Chinese either, but I try my best by copying and pasting Chinese characters into online Chinese-English dictionaries. 
我不知懂车的 should be segmented into 我不知 and 懂车的.
懂车的 refers to someone knowledgeable about cars. In Taiwan, we write 車 instead of 车.
And 懂车的 really means “懂车的人” with “人” being neglected.