I have to go, otherwise I'll arrive late.
CHINESE DICTIONARY ENTRY
要不然
otherwise
IN A VIDEO要不然
See this word with its surrounding sentence, pinyin, translation, and timestamp.
DEFINITIONS & USAGE
Meaning and common use
01
otherwise
02
or else
03
or
REAL CORPUS EXAMPLES
How 要不然 actually appears in real sentences.
These sentences are copied from the Tatoeba corpus, so they are real usage rather than generated text. 要不然 appears in 5 of the 89,190 sentences we searched.
Don't throw cigarette butts on the ground. Cockroaches might get cancer.
It's really cold today. You should dress warmer or you might catch a cold.
COMMON COLLOCATIONS
Words that keep company with 要不然.
Counted from the same corpus: the word that most often comes directly before, and directly after, 要不然.
Directly before
- No repeated neighbour in the corpus.
Directly after
- 要不然将来1
- 要不然会1
- 要不然我会1
- 要不然你1
- 要不然蟑螂1
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Where this entry comes from
The HSK level, part of speech, and pronunciation come from the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus. The English definitions come from CC-CEDICT. Corpus sentences, collocations, and the frequency figure come from the Tatoeba Chinese sentence export and are counted rather than written, so nothing on this page is invented. Usage notes and the hand-written examples that appear higher up exist only for a handful of entries.
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Vocabulary levels and parts of speech from the HSK 3.1 syllabus. This compiled dictionary is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About 要不然
What does 要不然 mean in Chinese?
要不然 (yàobùrán) means otherwise.
How do you pronounce 要不然?
要不然 is pronounced yàobùrán.
Is 要不然 an HSK word?
要不然 is on the list of the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus.
SEE IT IN CONTEXT
Upload a videoTurn your own Chinese video into a searchable learning file.
Keep English optional, place pinyin above Hanzi, and export subtitles named after your video.