De (structural particle)

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The structural particle "de" has three written forms in modern Chinese, each with its own uses:

There is also a modal particle 的.

Although certainly not complete for all uses, this simple structure should help:

的 + Noun

的 is known as 白芍的 (bái-sháo de) in Chinese as it's composed of the characters 白 (bái) and 勺 (sháo). It's used to mark possession or modification. One way to think about 的 is that it works like s' in English (apostrophe s), e.g.

Xiaoli's house
小李房子

This analogy works very well for possession, as it shows how English and Chinese handle possession in a similar way. Just remember that Chinese uses this 'possession' far more widely than English. Modifying, describing qualities and assigning attributes are all handled in the same way as possession, by using 的.

红色自行车

Here 的 is used to modify 'bike' with the colour 'red'. You could still think of this as possession - a bike that belongs to the category red.

Although certainly not complete for all uses, this simple structure should help:

Verb + 得

得 is known as 双人得 (shuāngrén de), as the radical 彳 is often known as 双人 (shuāngrén) - 'double person'. This de is probably the trickiest to crack for English speakers as it has no obvious equivalent in English. 得 is used to construct various kinds of complements.

Although certainly not complete for all uses, this simple structure should help:

地 + Verb

地 is known as 土也地 (tǔ-yě de), as it's composed of the characters 土 (tǔ) and 也 (yě). It's used to mark adverbs, and can often be seen as equivalent to the suffix -ly in English.

References


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