Mandarin learning guide
Learn with 還不夠
This guide follows the lyrics’ repeated question of what counts as “enough,” alongside scenes of meetings, contracts, dating, and a new home. You can use it to practice negation, rhetorical questions, and everyday professional vocabulary in context.
What to listen for
The lyrics move between exhaustion, work pressure, and repeated reflection on success and sufficiency. They pair concrete daily details like meetings, clothing, contracts, and a new home with recurring lines asking whether what has been gained or achieved is still not enough, making the song useful for studying how Mandarin repeats a key idea across different sentence frames.
- Recognize how 不够 is repeated with different verbs and nouns to express insufficiency.
- Understand how 是不是 and 怎么定义 create reflective, rhetorical questions.
- Learn practical words for work, contracts, meetings, and personal time as they appear in the lyrics.
How the song moves
Opening frustration
The first lines repeat inability and then shift into a question about when drinking became impossible, setting a tired, uncertain tone.
Daily pressure scenes
The lyrics list meetings, unfinished clothing prep, contracts, and a request not to be disturbed during a date, building a picture of packed schedules.
Refrain on sufficiency
The chorus keeps asking whether gained things or achieved things are still not enough, then repeats the phrase '还不够' for emphasis.
Reflection and reset
Later lines mention inspiration, romance, career compromises, and forgetting success, while the ending repeats leaving and not looking back.
Translation choices
是什么时候开始不能喝醉
- Natural English
- When did I start not being able to get drunk
- Why
- This keeps the reflective question form and the unusual negated ability structure, matching the lyric’s self-questioning tone.
成功怎么定义 旋律还是成绩
- Natural English
- How do you define success, melody or results
- Why
- The line contrasts two possible definitions with 还是, so a direct question preserves the lyric’s comparison and ambiguity.
还不够 还不够 还不够 忘了那些成功
- Natural English
- Still not enough, still not enough, still not enough, forget those successes
- Why
- This rendering follows the repeated refrain and the command-like shift into 忘了那些成功 without adding extra emotion.
Useful Mandarin from the song
Used in questions about time or change. Here it asks when a condition began.
A direct way to say something remains insufficient. The lyric repeats it as a central idea.
Used to introduce a concession before a result or contrast. It sets up a situation that does not remove the later problem.
Refers to yielding or making concessions. In this lyric, it appears in a work context, not a relationship conflict.
Listen closely
- Listen for how the phrase 还不够 returns in several different lines, each time attaching to a new object or action.
- Notice the contrast between concrete work details like 开会, 合约, and 报酬, and the abstract question of 成功怎么定义.
- Pay attention to the switch from description to commands and self-directed statements, especially in lines with 别 and 我不会.
Check your understanding
Which line asks how success should be defined?
Show answer
成功怎么定义 旋律还是成绩
What does 还不够 do in the chorus: describe a completed state or an unfinished one?
Show answer
It describes an unfinished or insufficient state.