Now that you understand the essential principles and tips for English speakers learning the Chinese language, we can begin our first real lesson: the basic Chinese vocabulary and grammar structures. This unit will provide elementary coverage of the most common Chinese words and phrases along with explanations of various sentence structures.

The study of any language begins with learning the ability to speak about oneself and others, and our course will be no different. For this reason, the PDF below includes a character exercise introducing a variety of important vocabulary terms. This character exercise consists of a Pinyin translation of the term in the first column, spaces to trace the Chinese character and replicate the character freehand in the next several columns, and a final column with the English translation of the term. For an introductory understanding of these words and familiarity with writing their characters, we recommend printing and completing the character exercise by filling in every open cell in each column. After completing the exercise, feel free to use the repetitive writing method with a notebook or whiteboard to master these vocabulary building blocks. 

Using these building blocks of language introduced in the previous exercise, we will begin to build sentences according to the Chinese grammar structure. Overall, the grammar systems in the Chinese language are fairly similar to English and relatively easy to learn compared to Latin-based languages. 

The easiest method for remembering the word order of sentences in Chinese is to memorize the acronym STPVO (Subject, Time, Place, Verb, Object). For example, in English we might say “I am a student” in the order Subject, Verb, Object. Similarly, in Chinese we would say “我是学生” (Wǒ shì xuéshēng) in the order of Subject, Verb, and Object. While STPVO is the general format for sentences in Chinese, students will find that there are examples when it is acceptable to ignore this rigid outline for the sake of clarity, especially when formulating questions or speaking colloquially. For now, students should focus on thinking in terms of this grammar structure instead of plugging Chinese characters into sentences with English word orders (a common source of mistakes for new students). The differences between Chinese and English word orders will become increasingly clear as students are exposed to more sentence types.

In the English language, pronouns like “him”, “her”, “them”, “me”, and “you” allow us to refer to ourselves and others without using proper names. The Chinese language also uses several pronouns to refer to people. In Chinese, “我” (wǒ) is a placeholder for “I” or “me”, “他” (tā) is used for a male person the same as “he” or “him”, “她” (tā) is used for a female person the same as “she” or “her”, “他们” (tāmen) is used for a group of people the same as “they” or “them”, and “你” (nǐ) is the same as “you”. You may notice that the Chinese pronouns “他” and “她” are gendered, but their pronunciations and Pinyin spellings are the same, meaning that students need to be extremely careful when typing to select the correct character. Additionally, you may wonder why the Chinese version of “they” (他们）uses the male “他”. In Chinese, when a group of people is made up of all males, a mix of genders, or is ambiguous, we use the male version of “他们”. If we know that the group we are referring to is made up exclusively of females, we can use the female version of “她们”.

Although the grammar structure of Chinese is fairly easy for students to grasp, there are also no verb conjugations in the Chinese language, sometimes creating a challenge for new students. Students may face a mental block with the exclusion of these familiar grammar tools from the Chinese language, but this unique feature once again makes Chinese a very efficient and simplistic dialect. For instance, in English, we may say “I am eating food”, “I will eat food”, or “I ate food” depending on whether the verb “to eat” takes place in the present, future, or past, respectively. On the other hand, the Chinese verb meaning “to eat” will always be written as “吃” (Chī). Instead of conjugating, to denote if a Chinese verb is taking place in the past or future, it will most often be accompanied by the character “了” (Le) or “会” (Huì), respectively (if no time phrase accompanies a verb, it is usually present tense). With this knowledge, we can translate “I am eating food” as “我吃饭”, “I will eat food” as “我会吃饭”, and “I ate food” as “我吃饭了”. You should notice that the character “会” describing future tense is written before the verb-object phrase (“吃饭” in this case) and the character “了” describing past tense is written after the verb-object phrase; this relationship is essentially always true. It is worth noting that the Chinese particle “了” is not equivalent to the past tense in English, but rather signifies that an action in a verb-object phrase has been completed (the action of eating food has been completed in the phrase “我吃饭了”). 

The most basic structure for posing a question in Chinese uses the question particle “吗” (Ma). We call this character a particle because it has no meaning on its own, but it indicates that a question is being posed when placed at the end of a sentence. For example, the statement “你是学生。” (meaning “You are a student.”) can be converted to a question by placing “吗” at the end of the sentence: “你是学生吗？” (meaning “Are you a student?”). Using the word “吗“ essentially poses a “yes or no” question, so an appropriate response to our previous question may be “我是学生。” (meaning “I am a student.”) or “我不是学生。” (meaning “I am not a student.”).

In English, we indicate that a person has possession of something by including ‘s after their name or altering the pronoun we use for them, but the possessive grammar structure in Chinese is much more simple. In Chinese, to indicate that a person possesses something, we add the particle “的” immediately after the person. For example, in English we may say “She is my mother.” by altering the pronoun “me” to the possessive “my”；however, in Chinese we would say “她是我的妈妈。” (Tā shì wǒ de māmā), simply placing the possessive particle after the “me” pronoun.

Another common format for questions in Chinese uses the question word “什么” (shénme, meaning “what”). A helpful way to understand how “什么” questions are formed is to think about how the desired answer might be written, and replace the missing information with “什么”. For example, in English we may ask “What is your name?” and receive a response in the format “My name is (insert name)”. In Chinese, we do not need to change the word order between the question and response. We may ask “你的名字是什么？” (directly translated to “Your name is what?), and another person may respond “我的名字是 (name)” (which translates to “My name is…). The purpose of this example is to show that using “什么” means that questions and answers in Chinese will likely have the same word orders, whereas in English the arrangement of words must change between question and response. Moreover, the Chinese phrase “你呢?” (Nǐ ne) is another common question format that simply translates to “and you?”. For instance, after being asked what your name is in Chinese, you may say “我的名字是 (insert name)。你呢?” prompting the original speaker to give their name as well. Finally, students should be familiar with the Chinese verb “叫” (Jiào, meaning “to call”), another common way to ask someone’s name as in the question “你叫什么名字?” (Nǐ jiào shénme míngzì).

Similar to the way in which English speakers show respect or formality by referring to others according to their surnames (“Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Jones”), the Chinese word 姓 refers to a person’s family name. Because Chinese names are written with the family name before the individual name, if a man named “王朋” (Wáng péng) is asked “你姓什么?” or “你贵姓?” (the Chinese adjective “贵” Guì, meaning wealth or honor, is sometimes included when speaking to someone of higher status to show respect), 王朋 may respond “我姓王。” It is worth noting that the verb “姓” is negated by placing “不” before it, so 王朋 may say “我不姓李” (Wǒ bù xìng lǐ, meaning “my surname is not Li”). Furthermore, the Chinese words “先生” (Xiānshēng) and “小姐” (Xiǎojiě) are used in place of the English “Mr.” and “Miss”, respectively; therefore, a man named “王朋” may be formally called “王先生”, and a woman named “可欣” (Kě xīn) may be formally called “可小姐”. Finally, the Chinese phrase “请问” (Qǐngwèn, meaning “may I ask”) may be included before any question to show respect. For example, when asking a businessman his surname, you may say “请问，你贵姓?”

Using your newfound vocabulary and grammar knowledge, attempt to complete the Unit 2 Grammar Exercise below. An answer key for all of the questions will be found on the last page of the document.

Continue to our third unit to begin learning numbers, dates, and times in Chinese!