哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace
In today’s video, you will learn 5 characteristics of Chinese grammar
which will help you better understand Chinese sentences
so you can learn Chinese more effectively!
那我們現在開始吧！ 那我们现在开始吧！
The first characteristic of Chinese grammar is
Chinese doesn’t have verb conjugations
Chinese has no verb conjugations
which means that we don’t change the verb forms
to express tenses or moods etc.
How do we express tenses in Chinese then?
To indicate when the things happen,
instead of conjugating the verbs
we often use time words, adverbs, or auxiliary verbs to do that
For example
Here you can see that the verb “去 to go”
stays the same no matter when things happen
The action taking place is specified
by the time word “昨天 yesterday” and “明天 tomorrow”
but if the context is clear enough already
you don’t even need these time words
For example
You can see that in the second sentence, there is no time word
but we still know when the action happened because the context is clear
To learn how to express different tenses in Chinese, check out this video!
Even though Chinese doesn’t really have tenses, but we have aspect
We use aspect markers to indicate the state of an action
For example
In Chinese, the particle 了 can be added after verbs
to indicate that an action or event is completed or realized
For instance
Here “了” is added after the verb to indicate that
the action “看 to look” has been completed
“了” can be used in the past or in the future
“了” in these cases is just for expressing
the completion or realization of the action
It has nothing to do with tenses
Another example is the progressive marker 在 (zà​i​)
it’s placed before verbs to indicate that an action or event is ongoing
For instance
If you need a video for more details on Chinese aspect markers
please let me know in the comments!
Now let’s move on to the second important fact about Chinese grammar
Word orders and particles are important
As you know, in Chinese
we don’t conjugate words to show grammatical functions
instead we often use particles or change the word order
As mentioned earlier, in Chinese, we use particles like “了”
to indicate the completion or realization of an action
So using particles in Chinese is an important way
to help express grammatical meanings
Another way to express grammatical meanings
is by changing the word order
it’s for this reason that many people think Chinese has no grammar
because our word order seems to change quite often
But when the word order is changed, there is always a reason for it
which means that there are some rules you can follow
Let’s see some examples
First, it’s important to know that
the basic Chinese word order is S + V + O
However, you may also see word orders like
“O + S + V” or “S + O + V” in Chinese
Here is an example
But you might also hear people say
Here the object is moved to the beginning because
it's something specific that the speaker wants to talk about
It could be in a context like this
In Chinese, there’s also a very unique sentence structure where
the object is placed before the verb, creating the “把” construction
If you’re interested in learning when and why
we use this sentence structure
go check out this video!
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OK, now let’s move on to the third characteristic of Chinese grammar
Chinese is a topic-prominent language
Chinese, just like Korean and Japanese, is a topic-prominent language
which means that many of our sentences are formed
with the topic-comment structure
A topic is mentioned first, and then additional information
or personal comments are added to it
Let’s take a look at the last example again
Here “咖啡 coffee” is the topic of our conversation
so we can put it at the beginning of the sentence
this is a topic-comment structure
But remember the topic should be familiar
for both the speaker and the listener
so here is a wrong sentence
You can only say “我喝了一杯咖啡”
because which cup of coffee you drank is unknown to the listener
so they are not familiar with it, thus it can’t be a topic
Next, we’re going to talk about
Are Chinese nouns countable or uncountable?
There are different schools of thought on this
because Chinese nouns are quite special
Some people think all of Chinese nouns are uncountable
because in order to count them
you have to add measure words to them, like
一 (yì) is “a,” the number word
篇 is the measure word for 文章 (article)
It’s similar to that in English,
when you want to count uncountable nouns
you need to use measure words, like
a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, etc
So in Chinese, when you’re learning nouns
it’s best to learn their measure words at the same time
so when you need to count them
you know what measure words to use
The last important fact about Chinese grammar is
Sentences can be shortened depending on the context
When studying Chinese, you learn the complete sentence structures
however, when listening to native speakers talk
you may hear only partial structures
This is because if the context is obvious
the subject or object tends to get dropped
This happens especially when answering a question
Let’s look at an example
The complete sentence would be
Here, you can see that all of the subjects were omitted
because they’re easy to infer from the context
Another example of Chinese sentences
shortened depending on the context is that
conjunctions aren’t used to connect sentences as much as in English
Here are some examples
To express “If you have questions, let me know”
In Chinese, the complete sentence would be
But in daily life, you might hear people say
without any conjunctions
Another example is that when there are
two actions happening in a time sequence
Something happens first, and then another thing happens
Oftentimes, we don’t need connecting words between them
For example
Here between the two verb phrases “來我家” and “吃晚餐”
there is no conjunction needed
So just remember that compared to English
Chinese is a language that doesn’t rely heavily on connecting words
to show the relationship between two phrases or sentences
Learning complete sentence structures and conjunctions are still important
because they help you express yourself more clearly
but don’t forget the concepts you learned here today
to avoid any frustration with partially complete
sentence structures in the future
Alright, that’s all for today!
I believe that knowing the characteristics of Chinese grammar
will help you learn Chinese faster and with less confusion
如果你覺得今天的影片很有用， 如果你觉得今天的影片很有用，
別忘記按讚、訂閱和分享哦！ 别忘记按赞、订阅和分享哦！
And 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!