Beginner Guide to Chinese Grammar

As a beginner, Chinese grammar can be challenging to understand. In this quick review, we will provide you with some basic tools to help you start mastering the language!

Background

English is classified as an Indo-European language. This language family includes a lot of languages spoken in the western world, including the romance languages (such as Spanish, French, and Portuguese) as well as the Slavic languages (such as Russian, Czech, and Polish) and many others. All of these languages have common grammar features which include conjugating verbs for different tenses, specific rules about subject/verb agreement, and adding endings to words to make them plural.

Chinese does not fit into the Indo-European family. Instead, it is classified as a Sino-Tibetan language and as a result the grammar can be very difficult for second language learners.

As a language, Chinese does not have an actual alphabet. Instead, characters known as “hanzi” are used to express the different sounds of the language. These characters can also be written using the roman letters in a system called “pinyin.”

Basic Tools

When initially learning Chinese, there are a number of misconceptions about Chinese grammar. We will start this overview looking at five specific tools in Chinese grammar. They are Word order • Questions • Possessives • Negation • Aspect

Word Order

In many cases, the word order and sentence structure is the same in Chinese as it is in English. Both languages use a subject-verb or a subject-verb-object formula for writing sentences. This means that the subject of your sentence does something.

Questions

Simple sentences can be turned into questions adding “ma” to the end of a sentence. This modifies the sentence the same way “ok” or “right” modifies a sentences in English. (Example: You’re leaving at noon, right?) There are of course other ways to form questions too, but this will get you started.

Possessives

Possession can be show using the particle “de.” This character functions the same way as an apostrophe “s” does in English and is added after the subject of the sentence.

Negation

You can use the same basic word order to express things that don’t happen. To express this negative action, the character “bu” is placed before the verb.

Aspect

Many beginners think that Chinese has no grammar. While this belief is false, it usually stems from the fact Chinese has no tenses to express events that took place in either the past or the future. Instead of tense, the language puts more emphasis on aspect.

More Information

Of course all of this is just the beginning. There are many more interesting characters and rules that can help you say lots of different things in Chinese. Check out the A1 page for more information.

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