Emphasizing quantity with "dou"

Revision as of 06:48, 15 November 2011 by Jonathan.pope (talk | contribs)

You can use 都 (dōu) to emphasise the large quantity of something, particularly a group of people. The structure is:

Subject + 都 + Verb + Object

The subject should be some sort of large group, e.g. "很多人". In this case the structure is literally "A lot of people all ... ", but in English this "all" is not normally used. In Chinese it's very common.

Some examples:

  • 很 多 人 想 减肥。
  • 大家 应该 知道。
  • 爱尔兰人 喜欢 喝 啤酒。