Chapter 5 of 7 · Weeks 4–5
Five sentence patterns
Word order, 是, 的, 吗, 了 and measure words, with audio.
Every Chinese word on this page is tappable. Try .
Mandarin grammar is mostly word order and a handful of small words. Five patterns cover most of what you will write and read in these first weeks. Every example below is tappable, with audio — say each one after the voice.
Word order
— I love you — runs word for word like English. The main difference is that time and place come before the verb: “I at seven get up”, “he tomorrow goes to Beijing”. If it helps, say the sentence in that order in English first. The sentences in chapter 7 follow it too.
links nouns, not adjectives
— I am a student. But for “she is tall”, say . Adjectives don’t take 是; they usually take instead, which literally means “very” but here mostly just fills the gap.
Without 很, sounds like a comparison — she’s the tall one. And is the classic beginner slip. Everyone makes it once.
for “my”, “of” and “’s”
— my book. — China’s culture. One little word does the work of my, your, of and ’s, which is why it is the most common character in the language.
makes a question
— you are a student. — are you a student? No word swapping and no “do”: just add 吗 to the end.
for “done” or “changed”
is “I eat”. is “I ate” — more exactly, the eating is done. is “it’s started raining”: a change from before.
Textbooks spend whole chapters on 了. “Done, or changed” covers most of what you will see in your first year; the rest comes from reading.
Measure words
Chinese counts nouns with a small category word in between: not “three books” but “three volume book”, . Here 三 is three, 书 is book and 本 is the measure word for books.
When in doubt, use (gè). It works almost everywhere, sounds a little plain, and is perfectly fine for a beginner. A count of 87,000 sentences found that 个 does a third of all the work, and eighteen measure words cover four-fifths — see how many you need. A few worth knowing now:
- for books
- for people, and many other things
- for animals
- for flat things: tickets, tables, photos
- for long, thin things: rivers, roads, fish
Today’s assignment · 20 min
Write ten sentences of your own with words from your deck: two with 是, two with an adjective and 很, two with 的, two questions with 吗 and two with 了. Look up any word you are missing. Simple, clumsy sentences are fine at this stage.
