Chinese Word Order

In the Chinese grammar, the word order is very basic and important. Word order will let people know what happen.

We start from basic Mandarin word order is

SVO: subject + verb + object

From this sentence structure, it is easily to find that Chinese word order is very similar to English . ^^

Example:      我        喜欢   她（他）

                    Subject+  Verb +  object

Pinyin :         wo xihuan ta

English:        I like her/him

Example:  他      是      中国人

              Subject+  Verb +  object

Pinyin:    ta shi  zhong guo ren

English:  He is a Chinese

Negative Sentences:  subject + 不（bu） verb + object

In Chinese grammar, when people impress negation in the sentence, there is one word,不(bu),to be added before the verb.

Example:  我    不         喜欢    她（她）

subject+ 不（bu）  Verb +  object

Pingyin:    wo bu xihuan ta

English:    I do not like her/him

Example:  他    不          是     中国人

subject+ 不（bu）  Verb +  object

English： He is not a Chinese.

Adverbials: time, action and place

 Subject+ time+place + action

If we want to make the sentence more information, such as time, action and place, the word structure is a bit complicate. Now, there are much different between Chinese and English.

Example: 我          昨天    在图书馆       读书 ( I yesterday at the library studied)

Subject+ time+ place + action

Pinyin：wo zuitian zaitushuguan dushu

English:  I studied at the library yesterday.

Example: 我        明天   在公园  等你 ( I tomorrow in the park meet you)

   Subject+ time+ place + action (verb+object)

Pinyin:  wo mingtian  zai gongyuan dengni

English: I will meet you in the park tomorrow

Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns are very import part of Chinese Grammar. When the learn start to study Chinese, the Personal Pronouns always appear in basic conversation. To Compare with English Grammar, very straightforward and have the same form regardless of being subject, object, indirect object, etc

There are two groups of personal pronouns, which are singular Personal Pronouns and Plural Personal Pronouns

Singular Personal Pronouns

In English personal pronouns are (I, you, he, she, it,), and (me, you, him, her, it,), In Mandarin, the personal pronouns are :  我(wo ), 你(ni ),他(ta), 她（ta）,他(ta),和它（ta）

我(wo )：I and Me

Example：我叫Dora  (subject)

Pinyin: wo jiao Dora

English:  I am Dora

Example:  他喜欢我   (Object)

Pinyin:  ta yihuan wo

English:  He like me

你(ni ): you

Example: 你是哪国人？  (subject)

Pinyin:  ni shi na guo ren ?

English: What is your nationality?

Example:  我爱你 （Object）

Pinyin:  wo ai ni

English: I love you

他（ta）: he and him

Example:  他是男孩 （subject）

Pinyin:   ta shi nan hai

English:  He is a boy

Example: 我认识他 （Object）

Pinyin:  wo ren shi ta

English: I know him very well

她（ta） : She and her

Example:  她是女孩

Pinyin : ta shi nv hai

English: She is a girl

Example: 我在教她汉语

Pinyin:  wo zai jiao ta hanyu

English: I am teaching her Chinese.

它（ta）: it – no human

Example: 它是一个梦.

Pinyin: ta shi yi ge meng

English: it is just a dream

Plural Personal Pronouns

As stated above, plurals are made by adding the ending 们（men）

我们 ( women)  we and us

Example: 我们是同学

Pinyin: women  shi  tongxue 

English: We are classmates.

你们　(nimen)  you

Example:  你们找到工作了吗？

Pinyin: ni men zhao dao gong zuo le ma?

English:  Do you find jobs?

他们（tamen） they and them

Example:  他们去上学了

Pinyin:  ta men qu shang xue le

English: They go to school.

Mandarin and Chinese

When we talk about Learning Chinese, mostly people study Mandarin. There are some differences between ‘Mandarin’ and ‘Chinese’. Mandarin is one type of Chinese. People in China use Mandarin as office language. In China, there are many kinds of dialects, such as Cantonese and Shanghaiese.

Pinyin

When people study Mandarin, they always start from Pinyin. What is Pinyi?

Pinyin : a set of phonetic symbol which make the every Character to be pronounced. Without pinyin, we can not speak single word.

A Pinin syllable is usually composed of an initial, a final and a tone. The consonant that starts a syllable is called the Initial, and the part after the initial is the final. The mark on top of the final is tone.

Chinese is a tone language. Different tomes may results in different meaning. There are four basic tones in Chinese, which are called the 1^st tone, the 2^nd tome, the 3^rd tone, and 4^th tone.

Hanzi

Chinese characters (hanzi) developed from a pictographic writing system in use a few thousand years ago. Now, people write Hanzi in two ways which is Simplified characters and traditional characters. In mainland China and Singapore, people prefer to use the simple character in writing, and in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, people use the traditional word in Writing.

Introduce yourself (介绍自己）

I am..

I am called…

Nice to meet you

Nice to meet you, too

When you stay in China, you can meet many new friends or colleagues. How to let them know who you are?  How to express yourself in Chinese? there are many ways to do that, however, here I would like to share with you two simple and easy ways.

You can start from the phrase : “我是” or “我叫” + [ Your Name ]

I am Dora (my name)

The Phrase	我 是 Dora
Pinyin	Wo shi Dora
Grammar	Subject (我)+ Verb (是)+ Noun(Dora)

Words:

我： I

是： to be

There is another way to express by using “叫” instead of “是”

I am called Dora 

The Phrase	我 叫 Dora
Pinyin	Wo jiao Dora
Grammar	Subject (我)+ Verb (叫)+ Noun(Dora)

Words:

叫：to be called.

Nice to meet you

The Phrase	很高兴认识你
Pinyin	Hen Gao Xing ren shi ni
Grammar	Adv (很高兴)+ Verb (认识)+ object(你)

How to reply? You can use the word “也” which is inserted the above sentence.

Nice to meet you,too

The Phrase	（我）也很高兴认识你
Pinyin	Hen Gao Xing ren shi ni
Grammar	Adv (很高兴)+ Verb (认识)+ object(你)