Connecting nouns with "shi"

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The verb to be is not used in Chinese the same way as it is in English. In Chinese, 是 is for connecting nouns, and is generally not used with adjectives. The structure for connecting nouns with 是 is:

Noun 1 + 是 + Noun 2

This is equivalent to "Noun 1 is Noun 2" in English. In terms of sentence elements, the structure is:

Subject + 是 + Object

Chinese does not conjugate verbs. That is, the form of the verb is the same no matter who is doing it. In this case, it is always 是 and never changes. As you can see, it's easy to form simple sentences expressing to be in Chinese. Some examples:

Simple 是 sentences
Subject Object
学生
医生
老师
杯子

See also

Sources and further reading

Books