哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace.
Have you ever wondered how to express “the” in Chinese?
In English, “the” is used when you’re talking about
a specific person, place, or thing.
For example, “I want the cake.”
It’s that specific cake I want.
Both the speaker and the listener know which one you’re referring to.
In Chinese, we don’t have the articles “the”
so how can we express when we’re talking about something specific?
Let’s find out in today’s video!
In Chinese, when we’re talking about a specific person, place, or thing,
there are several different ways to express this
depending on the context and the meaning you want to convey.
The first one is by adding “這 / 那 (+ Measure word)” before the noun
For example,
Sometimes if the context is clear enough,
you can even drop the demonstratives
and just use the noun itself, like
Another example,
If both the speaker and the listener know
which teacher you’re referring to,
then you can simply say 老師 (teacher) without adding anything else
But if the listener doesn’t know which teacher you’re talking about,
then you’ll have to add more details to the noun.
For example,
If you’ve learned Chinese for a while,
you might have noticed that
in Chinese, we have many different sentence patterns and word orders,
for example, you can say “我 (I) 看完 (finish watching) 電影 (movie) 了”
which uses the SVO structure, but we also have topic-comment structure,
where you can say “電影 (movie) 我 (I) 看完 (finish watching) 了”
which uses the OSV structure.
Using different word orders is another way
to help express “the” in Chinese.
When we speak, we tend to say something we both know first,
and then we give new information that is unknown to the listener.
This makes it easier for the listener to understand what you’re saying.
So in Chinese, this can affect the meaning of a sentence,
often times, the noun before the verb will be something specific or known
by both the speaker and the listener.
Let’s revisit the example you saw at the beginning of today’s video,
In the first sentence, it’s most likely that
the speaker doesn’t know what the person bought
and they’re not talking about a specific item.
However, for the second sentence, 東西 is placed at the beginning,
which indicates that both the speaker and the listener know
which specific item it is.
So “東西你買給他了嗎？” means “Did you buy it (the item) for him?”
Let’s see another example,
For the second sentence, it could be in a conversation like…
Another example,
In the SVO structure, the object can still be something specific;
however it relies on the context, demonstratives
or modifiers to make them clear. For example,
So from the previous examples, you can see that
the different word orders help covey different meanings.
However, this is just one way to express “the” in Chinese and not a rule.
When we talk about something specific,
we don’t always change word orders,
because it also depends on whether that specific thing is
something important to talk about in the conversation.
But knowing that different word orders can convey different meanings
will help you understand why sometimes we choose to use
different sentence structures.
Okay, now let’s do a quick recap.
To express “the” in Chinese,
which is when we talk about a specific person, place, or thing,
there are several different ways to approach it.
The first one is by adding “這/ 那 (+ Measure word)” before the noun,
like 這個蛋糕 (the/this cake) or 那個蛋糕 (the/that cake),
and if the context is clear enough,
you don’t even have to add any of these,
just simply use the noun itself, like 蛋糕 (cake).
Because of the context, people would know
which cake you’re talking about.
As opposed to English,
in Chinese, there is another way that can help express
that we’re talking about something specific,
which is by using different word orders. Like,
你看完書了嗎？Did you finish reading?
書你看完了嗎？Did you finish the book?
For the second sentence, the book is a specific book
that both the speaker and the listener know.
However, if in your conversation that specific thing is
not something important that you want to talk about,
we wouldn’t put it at the beginning of the sentence.
OK, that’s all for today!
I hope today’s video helped you better understand
about how the Chinese language works.
Let me know in the comments
if you’ve ever wondered how to express “the” in Chinese
and what your thoughts are about this!
And also I’d like to thank those of you
who have been supporting me on my ko-fi page,
and some of you even support me monthly.
I really really appreciate your support!
Alright, 如果你們喜歡今天的影片， Alright, 如果你们喜欢今天的影片，
別忘記按讚、訂閱和分享哦！ 别忘记按赞、订阅和分享哦！
Last but not least, if you’d like to learn some daily Mandarin expressions,
check out my instagram @gracemandarin
那我們下次見囉！掰掰！ 那我们下次见啰！掰掰！ I’ll see you next time! Bye!