Please note that 这 (zhè) refers to the place of the shirt (like the English word 'this'). Here we have actually two adjectives following the noun shirt ‘衬衫 (chèn shān)’:ġ) 蓝色的 (lán sè de) indicates the color blue (note that 蓝色的 (lán sè de) acts as an adjective).Ģ) 新的 (xīn de) indicates that the shirt is new. If you like to describe certain things, the adjective normally follows the noun. Past tense is indicated by 了 (le) – (article for past tense) which is placed after the verb.įuture tense is indicated by 将要/要 (jiāng yào/yào) – (will/be going to do) which is placed in front of the verb. This is the same as the word order in English (e.g.
In Chinese, the word order is Subject-Verb-Object. Now that we have learned our first sentence, let me explain a little about the standard word order. To emphasize the present progressive tense, the word 着 (zhe/ particle) is put behind the verb. In the present progressive tense we just need to use the basic form. We will see how this works in the next section about verb tenses Present Progressive Tense tenses, plural etc.) is conveyed by adding additional words (e.g. Verbs are also pretty straight forward in Chinese! They do not change with person, tense, number and there are no participles.Ĭhinese words (whether nouns or verbs) never change their form.
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Now that we already learned how to use nouns, in order to make complete sentences, we need to know about verbs. Since Chinese doesn't have articles, ‘a woman’ is equal to ‘one woman’, in Chinese it is 一个女人 ‘three women' is 三个女人. 个 (gè/ measure word for vehicle) is a measure word for general use. They do not have articles or genders, and there is no distinction between singular or plural.Īs for countable nouns, to express or to emphasize plural or numeral, various measure words, such as 辆 (liàng/measure word for vehicle), 个 (gè/measure word for general use), and 艘 (sōu/ measure word for ship]), need to be added in front of a noun:įor example, 女人 (nǚ rén) can be understood as 'a/one woman' or 'women (female)'. Nouns are pretty simple in the Chinese language. The best way to practice the tones is to listen carefully and to repeat the words and sentences. One of the most difficult element for the learner of the Chinese language is the correct pronunciation of the four phonemic tones: the first tone (ˉ), the second tone (′), the third tone (ˇ), and the forth tone (‵) because the concept of Tones is not existing in many European Languages including English. However there are also elements in the Chinese language that we do not have in many Western Languages.
Whereas the English verb “to know somebody” might have different forms like “knows”, “knew”, “known” etc., the equivalent Chinese verb 认识 (rèn shí) itself always stays the same, regardless of the context. When compared to other Languages, on a fundamental level the Mandarin grammar is actually very simple.Įach word normally stays the same thus there are no conjugations, no plural forms, no genders and no articles. (ˇ) 你 (nǐ).Ĭharacters are used everywhere in daily life, such as books, newspapers, signs, etc… Phonetic scripts and tones, together called Pīnyīn, are used in dictionaries and textbooks to guide learners to learn the pronunciation of the characters. Mandarin Chinese consists of characters/ standard script (你), phonetic script (ni), and tone marks, e.g. It is different from another popular Chinese language, Cantonese, which is mainly spoken in Guangdong province and Hong Kong. The Chinese you are learning here is the official language of China, which is also called Mandarin Chinese.
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