Learner FAQ

Many learners have the same questions about Chinese grammar. We've compiled the most Frequently Asked Questions here, and organized them by difficulty level for your convenience.

Beginner Questions

Does Chinese have grammar?

Despite what you may have heard, Chinese does have grammar. Otherwise anything you say would make sense, and that's clearly not the case. (Plus, we like to think that all this work we've done for the Chinese Grammar Wiki is actually useful!)

Is it true that Chinese word order is the same as English word order?

It is true that for many very simple sentences the word order in the two languages is the same, but even in many very basic sentence patterns, you'll find that Chinese diverges from English in some important ways. For example, where to put time words, or where to put a location of an action are quite different in Chinese. We recommend you check out our page on word order in Chinese for more details.

What's the difference between a character and a word?

In Chinese, virtually all words are written using characters, but not all characters are words. So if you're learning new words in Chinese, you're pretty much always dealing with characters. But it's quite common to learn a new character which is not a word by itself. In this grammar wiki, you'll encounter single characters used as words, but this resource was not designed to teacher single characters outside of that scope.

I've heard Chinese doesn't have words for "yes" and "no." Is this true?

Yes, sort of. In Chinese, the most common way to answer a question is to use the repeat the same that was used in the question. Use the verb in the positive for "yes," and use the verb in the negative for "no."

Is it true that Chinese doesn't have verb conjugation or tenses?

Yes, this is true! Chinese uses aspect, not tense. So of course there are ways to refer to the past, the present, the future, etc., but it doesn't work quite the same way that English does. Key to these concepts are the aspectual particles, but we don't recommend you worry about that too much now if you're just starting out.

Does Chinese have levels of formality like Japanese and Korean?

No. Much like English, Chinese has more formal vocabulary and sentence patterns for more formal situations, but it's not actually built into any verb forms. (There is only one "verb form" for each verb in Chinese. Yay!)

Elementary Questions

What is a particle?

A particle is a tiny word that serves a grammatical purpose. Chinese particles are often used to mark a question, or to indicate that an action has been completed. Chinese particles are always neutral tone, and are never used by themselves. Common examples include 了 (le), 吧 (ba), and 吗 (ma).

There's a lot more to learn more about particles, but don't try to learn them all at once. Learn them as you need them.

How do I use 了 (le)?

That, my friend, is the million dollar question that confounds all learners of Chinese. Unfortunately, learning to use 了 (le) is not a matter of following a few simple rules. It's a matter of learning many, many individual patterns and rules for using 了, and over time, gradually getting a feel for its usage. The Chinese Grammar Wiki has pages on both the aspectual particle 了 and the modal particle 了 (the two major traditional classifications), but you're probably better off just studying our big page of 了 patterns.