iSmartNetwork Magazine The online magazine for you…
Chinese grammar rule #1: What precedes modifies what follows
This rule sounds a little bit complicated when you first see it, but it’s actually quite straightforward. It simply means that modifiers come before the thing they modify. The Chinese language, right through from the written classical language to the modern spoken vernacular, has always had this rule.
Let’s look at some simple examples to demonstrate this rule.
他不喜欢 贵的 东西。
Tā bù xǐhuan guì de dōngxi.He doesn’t like expensive things.
我哥哥 慢慢地 开车。
Wǒ gēgē mànmande kāichē.My brother drives slowly .
她能喝 很多 啤酒。
Tā néng hē hěnduō píjiǔ.
She can drink a lot of beer.
As you can see in each of the Chinese sentences, the modifier (colored red) comes before the thing it modifies. 贵的 (expensive) comes before 东西 (things), 慢慢地 (slowly) comes before 开车 (drive) and 很多 (a lot of) comes before 啤酒 (beer). Notice how the position of the modifier varies in the English sentences.
Knowing about this ‘modifiers first’ rule in Chinese grammar can be very helpful in the early stages of your Chinese studies. It lets you follow the structure of sentences more quickly because you can identify modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) and the things they’re modifying (nouns and verbs) more easily.
It also lets you form sentences with more confidence because you know that adjectives should be placed before the nouns they modify, and adverbs should be placed before the verbs they modify.
Chinese grammar rule #1: What precedes modifies what follows
This rule sounds a little bit complicated when you first see it, but it’s actually quite straightforward. It simply means that modifiers come before the thing they modify. The Chinese language, right through from the written classical language to the modern spoken vernacular, has always had this rule.
Let’s look at some simple examples to demonstrate this rule.
他不喜欢 贵的 东西。
Tā bù xǐhuan guì de dōngxi.He doesn’t like expensive things.
我哥哥 慢慢地 开车。
Wǒ gēgē mànmande kāichē.My brother drives slowly .
她能喝 很多 啤酒。
Tā néng hē hěnduō píjiǔ.
She can drink a lot of beer.
As you can see in each of the Chinese sentences, the modifier (colored red) comes before the thing it modifies. 贵的 (expensive) comes before 东西 (things), 慢慢地 (slowly) comes before 开车 (drive) and 很多 (a lot of) comes before 啤酒 (beer). Notice how the position of the modifier varies in the English sentences.
Knowing about this ‘modifiers first’ rule in Chinese grammar can be very helpful in the early stages of your Chinese studies. It lets you follow the structure of sentences more quickly because you can identify modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) and the things they’re modifying (nouns and verbs) more easily.
It also lets you form sentences with more confidence because you know that adjectives should be placed before the nouns they modify, and adverbs should be placed before the verbs they modify.
Rule #3: Chinese is topic-prominent
This is a rule that English-speakers often find hard to get used to. Chinese is topic prominent. This means that it puts the thing the sentence is about first. English is subject prominent, which means that it puts the doer of an action (the subject) in a sentence first.
If you haven’t studied grammar before, you might not be familiar with these terms. The subject in a sentence is the thing that performs the action of the verb. The subject of the following sentences is colored red:
He likes cheese.
You are awesome.
New York is exciting.
We eat rice.
English and other European languages usually prefer to put the subject first, as you can see in the sentences above. But Chinese and other East Asian languages often prefer to put the topic of the sentence first.
The topic of a sentence isn’t as clear as the subject. The topic is not a grammatical role, but the thing that the sentence is about. It’s the main point of the sentence. It’s also called the theme of the sentence for this reason.
I’ve finished my work .
In this sentence the subject is “I”, but that’s not really what the sentence is about. The sentence is not about the speaker, it’s about the work. So the topic of this sentence is “the work”.
Because Chinese is topic-prominent, it’s often possible and very natural to put the topic first in a sentence rather than the subject. It is also possible in English, but it sounds much less natural, as you can see in the following examples:
红酒我不太喜欢。
Hóngjiǔ wǒ bù tài xǐhuan.
Red wine, I don’t really like.
法国我没去过。
Fàguó wǒ méi qùguò.
France, I haven’t been to.
一支笔有吗？
Yī zhī bǐ yǒu ma?
A pen – got one?
The sentences above are perfectly permissible according to Chinese grammar rules, but quite odd in English. Note that you could also form the Chinese sentences with the subject first and they would be just as grammatical.
Also notice that the last sentence doesn’t include the subject (you) at all. This is possible because Chinese grammar is primarily interested in the topic (a pen) and not the subject.
Rule #4: Aspect, not tense
Another big difference between European languages and Chinese is aspect and tense. European languages usually indicate both of these things in a sentence, whereas Chinese tends to only indicates aspect.
Again, you might not be aware of what these terms mean. Tense is about when an action took place relative to now, when we’re speaking. Aspect is about the completeness of an action relative to when it took place. Have a look at these two sentences in English to see the difference:
I will set off to Beijing.
I will have set off to Beijing.
Both of these sentences are in the future tense. But the aspect is different, because the completeness of the action (setting off to Beijing) is different in the time frame of each sentence. The speaker hasn’t yet set off to Beijing in either sentence. In the time frame they’re speaking about in the second sentence, though, they will have. So the aspect is different (the action is complete in that time frame).
You getting the idea now?
So say in Chinese “my name is Jane”
simple see……easy peasy
