Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm trying to figure out whether an
alarm clock 吵醒我， or 叫醒我。 I'd like to say the sentence my alarm
clock woke me up at 5:30 today my translation so far is 今天早上五点半，
我手机的闹钟叫醒了我。 Can 叫醒 be done by inanimate objects? Is this
construction used in chinese?  share|improve this question  2
Answers 2  up vote 16 down vote accepted  Yes, that is fine; it
is quite common to use 叫醒 with alarms.  In fact you can use both
吵醒 and 叫醒 here, although there's a small difference in
connotations. It isn't a very strong distinction though, so you
needn't be overly concerned.  Anyway, 叫醒 normally means the
action was intended to wake you. In contrast 吵醒 carries the
sense that being woken up is unplanned or unwanted, i.e. some
noise woke you (implying you aren't happy about it). For
example, if your neighbours' alarm woke you, you'd normally use
吵醒. If the hotel's morning call woke you, that's normally 叫醒.
share|improve this answer Great explanation. –  deutschZuid Jul
20 '14 at 22:13 Would this be a bette