Learn Mandarin Chinese Grammar

Chinese grammar is a topic that’s becoming interesting to more and more people around the world. The number of people studying Mandarin Chinese has been on the rise for some time and this trend looks set to continue.

Instead, this site aims to provide detailed but down to earth explanations of Chinese grammar for anyone that needs them. If you’re studying Mandarin Chinese yourself, we hope you find the content here useful (and if you do find it useful, please consider spreading the word and sharing our pages with others).

If you teach Mandarin Chinese, we hope that you’ll find the content here a useful aid for your students in class and elsewhere.

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But I thought Chinese had no grammar?

The idea that Chinese has no grammar is a common misconception, but it’s totally untrue. Many people who spread this idea actually have little to no knowledge of the Chinese language, and are instead simply passing on hearsay. The grammar of Chinese is as rich and complex as that of any other language, and mastering it takes commitment and serious study.

The reason this myth exists is probably because Chinese grammar is very different to that of European languages. It’s more common for English-speaking people to learn other European languages, which have many familiar grammatical features. Several of these features are not found in Chinese, including:

    Conjugation (changing verbs from their basic form)
    Agreement (changing adjectives)
    Gender (nouns having different forms for their gender)
    Plural nouns (changing the form of a noun to indicate the number)
    Tense (showing the time an action took place by changing the verb)

Chinese is actually in a totally different language family to European languages. European languages are part of the Indo-European group, whereas Chinese is pretty much in a family of its own. Because of this large difference and lack of familiar features, some people get the impression that Chinese has no grammar. Just because Chinese doesn’t have the features we usually think of as grammar, though, is by no means the same thing as it having no grammar at all.

Chinese actually has a lot of grammatical features that don’t really exist in English, or at least aren’t used to the same extent:

    Classifiers
    Topic-prominence
    Preference for aspect

What are the basics of Chinese grammar?

Despite what we said above, at its most basic level, Chinese grammar is superficially similar to that of European languages. The basic word order is in fact the same. Chinese is an SVO language, which means that the word order is subject · verb · object. This is the same as in English, French and the majority of languages around the world.

Let’s have a look at some simple sentences in Chinese and English to demonstrate this point.

我爱你。
Wǒ ài nǐ.
I love you.

她喝啤酒。
Tā hē píjiǔ.
She drinks beer.

他喜欢猫。
Tā xǐhuan māo.
He likes cats.

If the text above doesn’t seem to be displaying properly, it might be because your computer isn’t set up to display Chinese text properly. Have a look at this guide or Google around for “display Chinese” or “display CJK characters“.

In those examples, the different parts of speech have been color coded. As you can see from this color coding, the word order of these sentences is the same in Chinese and English.

Beyond these basic sentences, though, Chinese grammar is very different and very complicated. That’s where this site comes in: as a source of clear, detailed and comprehensive grammar explanations for Mandarin Chinese. We hope you find it useful!

If you’ve just started studying Chinese or you’re interested in the language, why not have a look at 10 basic Chinese grammar points for beginners?
What was that…? How is Chinese written?

If you’re new to Chinese then you’re probably not used to the writing system at all. Chinese is written in Chinese characters (strangely enough!), which are also referred to as hanzi. Hanzi are a very special writing system, and it’s pretty cool that they exist and are in use by billions of people today. Like a lot of things to do with Chinese, though, there are endless misunderstandings about hanzi and how they work.

The first thing that beginners should realize is that Chinese is not written with an alphabet. To put it another way, Chinese characters are not an alphabet. Instead, each Chinese character has one or more pronunciations (usually one) and several related meanings. Here’s an example:

语
yǔ
language, speech, dialect

So you can see that the character 语 is pronounced yǔ and has a small range of closely-related meanings. This is very similar to a word in English. Chinese characters also combine into words. Let’s take the word for “grammar” as an example:

语法
yǔfǎ
grammar

The first part of this word is the character 语 (yǔ) as we saw above. Then there’s another character: 法. This is pronounced fǎ, and means “law” or “rule” plus some related meanings. So altogether we get the word yǔfǎ, literally “language rules”, which means “grammar”.

Words in Chinese may consist of anything from one to several characters, and can of course be combined into larger terms. Let’s have a look at another word, this time a word for “Chinese” as a language:

中文
Zhōngwén
Chinese

The first character in this word is 中 (zhōng). Originally this character just meant “middle” (notice how it’s a line going through the middle of the box). It does still have that meaning, but it’s also come to refer to China, due to the term “middle kingdom”. The next character is 文 (wén), which means “writing”, “language” and a few other things. Together we get “China language” or “Chinese”.

Now we can put these two words together and get 中文语法 (Zhōngwén yǔfǎ): “Chinese grammar”. That was a very basic introduction to how written Chinese works, but hopefully it has set you on the right track to understanding this fascinating writing system.

Native English speakers can learn Mandarin Chinese more easily than they think

The government, business leaders and probably your parents (if you’re at school) will tell you it’s good to learn Mandarin Chinese, but the language’s reputation as impossible may make you balk at the challenge. Weicong Liang, Chinese Instructor and Teaching Supervisor at the Business Confucius Institute, University of Leeds, demystifies.

In my experience, most British students are gifted in learning languages and are usually sensitive to Asian culture. This is their biggest advantage when learning Chinese. It is however understandable that some learners think Chinese is a difficult language. In the UK, Chinese is not the first foreign language choice, while European languages such as French, Spanish and German are much more popular.

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Grammar

Chinese grammar is in many ways similar to English grammar. A simple Chinese sentence structure consists of a subject, a predicate and an object. For example, ‘I wash my hands’ in Chinese is 我 Wo (I) 洗 xi (wash) 手 shou (hands). Chinese gammar is even simpler in some ways. For instance, the Chinese language does not have different forms based on gender, or singular/plural. There are some differences between Chinese and English, but it is not hard to trace the clue and bridge the gap.

A major difference between the two languages is that there are a lot of measure words in Chinese. The place and use of measure words in Chinese are similar to how the English word ‘piece’ is placed and used in the phrase ‘a piece of paper’. Although most objects (‘paper’, in this case) have their own measure words, objects of the same kind or with similar characteristics use the same measure words. For instance, 纸 zhi (paper), 报纸 baozhi (newspaper), 照片 zhaopian (photo), 画儿 huar (painting) and 邮票 youpiao (stamp) share the measure word 张 zhang (piece). Even 床 chuang (bed) uses the same measure word, ‘zhang’, because those objects all have a flat surface.

Characters

Another major difference is the characters. Let’s take 人 (ren) as an example. A single 人 means a person, a human being. Two 人 make a new character, 从 (cong), which means to follow (one person followed by another person). Three 人 make 众, which means the masses or a crowd. Likewise, a single 木 means a tree or wood. Two 木 make 林, meaning woods. Three 木 make 森, which means a forest. We can build more complex Chinese characters by learning basic components and single-structure characters step by step. It is like we learn various English words by starting from the 26 letters.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is not a problem for British students. Over the 60 freshmen I’ve been teaching are beginners. None of them has trouble pronouncing Chinese (those whose mother tongue is French or Italian often have more difficulties). What most British students may find difficult are the four tones, which they don’t have in English. But you can solve this problem with practice, and I believe it can be done within the first semester at university.

What you can do after six months to a year of learning Mandarin Chinese

Usually, after six months’ study, most students can independently pass customs at a Chinese airport, make appointments with friends, ask for directions, take public transport, order food in canteens, bargain in the mall or markets, make hotel reservations, talk about the weather, buy travel tickets or film tickets, describe things and express their interests and opinions. Some students can even travel without guidance to other East Asian countries linguistically related to Chinese (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and so on). If a British learner spends enough time learning Chinese for one year, she or he can even directly enter a university in China.

Even primary schools across England to offer Mandarin Chinese to thousands of pupils

Thousands of primary school children in England will benefit from the opportunity to learn Mandarin Chinese and study Chinese culture as part of the new five-year initiative, Mandarin Chinese for Primary Schools, from the Institute of Education (IOE) funded by HSBC Global Education Programme.

The work of the IOE Confucius Institute for Schools (IOE CI) has focussed predominantly on the development of Mandarin Chinese in secondary schools. Mandarin Chinese for Primary Schools will extend this work to more primary schools in England and develop the most effective ways to teach Chinese language and culture at the primary level.

There are currently over 5,600 pupils studying Chinese via  IOE specialist centres of excellence, called 'Confucius Classrooms', across 37 schools around England and more than 1,500 pupils and their teachers have taken part in the IOE CI's Chinese language learning Summer Camps in China. HSBC's support for the Mandarin Chinese for Primary Schools project will extend provision for Mandarin Chinese language learning into the primary sector at more than 100 primary schools across the country.

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In the first year of the initiative, 30 primary schools will join the programme working with a network of secondary schools who already teach Mandarin Chinese under the provision of the IOE CI. Overall, the project will aim to reach 3500 children.  Over the next five years the programme will extend to at least 120 primary schools across the country. Schools benefitting from the project will be able to share resources and develop curricula with other teachers teaching Chinese in the primary sector

Katharine Carruthers, Director, IOE Confucius Institute for Schools, said:

"Mandarin Chinese is one of the fastest growing languages in the world and it is crucial that the language is being taught effectively in schools around England. We're delighted that HSBC Global Education Programme is backing this initiative which will open up Chinese language and culture to children, parents and the wider community in the UK. This move will benefit many school communities who would not otherwise have the opportunity to study this subject."

Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham, Greasby Infant School in Merseyside and Rosendale Primary School in West Dulwich are three of the schools that are already signed up to take part in the programme.

Kate Atkins, Head of School at Rosendale Primary said: "It is so exciting to see that the importance of primary children learning Mandarin is being recognised. This will support schools to develop effective programmes and, more importantly, get children learning Mandarin."

Lorraine Thomas, Senior Manager, Global Education and UK Community Investment, HSBC, said:

'This is an exciting addition to our current support for the British Council's China programme.   Since 2000, we have been working together with the Council to help young people learn Mandarin Chinese and also learn about the Chinese culture through projects such as Chinese Language Assistants teaching in UK schools; annual residential Summer Schools for 100 KS2 UK children held at boarding schools in the UK and the annual Mandarin Speaking competition for secondary school students.  The new IOE project provides more opportunities for young people to learn another language and about another culture and the importance of competing in a global economy.

Learn Mandarin Chinese TOP 5 TIPS

As a non-Asian student in the 1980s who graduated with a B.A. in Chinese language and history, and an M.A. in East Asian Studies focused on classical Chinese literature, I became somewhat of a "curiosity" for family and friends. Back then, China was only just starting to emerge from its isolation in the international community, and my own interest in studying Chinese raised many eyebrows -- as if I were pursuing a subject which was way out on the fringe, and had little practical career applications.

When I subsequently began my career in business after completing an M.B.A in the early 1990s, China was already starting to flex its commercial and political muscles on the international stage. However, even then, many of my acquaintances and colleagues still viewed my fluency in Chinese as not much more than an unusual topic for social conversation, and an ability that would enable me to order the best, most authentic food in Chinese restaurants.

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That was then, this is now.

In 2013, China's central and ever-growing role in international political and business affairs is both universally recognized, and constantly making headlines across the world. As a result, recent years have witnessed what can only be described as the full throes of Chinese-language "fever" in the United States. Across our cities, Chinese language programs are rapidly emerging to address the needs of busy business professionals who are looking to fast-track a working competency in Chinese to more effectively build global business relationships. At the same time, Chinese language has become one of the fastest growing subjects in the educational sphere, with primary/secondary schools and colleges across the country rushing to add Chinese to their foreign language teaching rosters. From 1998 to 2009, U.S. college student enrollment in Chinese language classes more than doubled, as did the number of high school students taking the AP Chinese exam during the three year period from 2007-2010. Federally-funded programs such as The Language Flagship have further spurred such growth through the implementation of intensive teaching methodologies and programs available at the K-12 and college/university levels.

Against this backdrop, my own Chinese language fluency has suddenly placed me in the position of a trusted adviser for colleagues and students who are increasingly seeking me out for my input on how to best learn this language. So, from one long-term student of Chinese, to all those who aspire to achieve a working knowledge of this fascinating language, here are my top five insights:

1. Understand that Chinese, while difficult, can also be very easy to learn.

Most people believe that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world. In some senses, this is true. The Chinese writing system is non-alphabetic, comprising thousands of pictographs called "characters," which need to be studied and internalized through rote memorization and constant reading and writing over a long period of time. Additionally, Chinese is a "tonal" language, meaning that changing the shape of one's voice over a single syllable can actually generate multiple words with multiple meanings. The most famous example in Mandarin Chinese is the syllable "ma" which, depending on how it is pronounced, might mean "mother," "hemp," "horse," or the verb "to scold." This is a feature of the spoken language which does not exist in the same form in Western languages, and therefore can pose great challenges to many non-Asian students.

However, what most non-Chinese do not realize is that the language boasts one of the easiest grammars in the world. Sentence structure largely mirrors that of English (subject + verb + object). Verbs exist in a single form, with no conjugations whatsoever. There is no gender, no plural nouns, and while mechanisms do exist to express tense (e.g. past/present/future), they are much simpler than those of any Western language. North American students who are much more familiar with both Spanish and French would instantly find Chinese grammar refreshingly basic, and much more accessible than those languages.

2. Learn Mandarin, not Cantonese.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of regional and local spoken Chinese dialects which have developed over the long period of China's classical history when transportation was rudimentary, broadcast media non-existent, and most people lived and died within a small radius of their birth places. Although speakers of all Chinese dialects share the same, non-phonetic written language, many of the dialects are mutually unintelligible when spoken, giving rise to the unique ability of Chinese speakers from different regions to write to each other, even when they cannot speak with each other. Among Chinese who have emigrated, the two most common spoken dialects are Mandarin and Cantonese. Historically, Cantonese dominated within the largest Chinese communities in the United States and Canada due to a century of Chinese immigration rooted in the southern Chinese regions of Guangdong (Canton) Province and Hong Kong. However, with the recent massive influx of Mainland Chinese, Mandarin-speaking immigrants in the last 20+ years, Mandarin will soon match, and eventually overtake, Cantonese to become the dominant spoken Chinese dialect in North America.

For non-Chinese seeking to learn the language, Mandarin is the clear choice. Mandarin, the predominant dialect in Northern China, is the official language of politics, education, and media in both Mainland China and Taiwan, and it is one of the four official languages of Singapore. Even in Hong Kong, which historically has been a Cantonese-speaking area, Mandarin use is now ubiquitous since the return of China's sovereignty in 1997. In Mainland China, the Chinese word for "Mandarin" translates as the "common language," and outside of the Mainland it is most often referred to as the "national language" -- both these terms are indicative of the broad reach which a competency in Mandarin can afford a speaker. Fortunately, for students of Chinese, Mandarin is also arguably the easiest of all the Chinese dialects to learn, owing to a "tonal" structure which is much simpler than that of Cantonese and most other dialects.

3. Speak first, then decide if you need to read and write.

Given the complexity of the Chinese written language, contrasted to the comparative simplicity of the grammar, prospective students of Chinese would do well to focus on learning to speak first, and only then tackle the written language if their studies or business require them to do so. While the tonal character of the spoken language is a challenge, this can be mastered fairly quickly, in contrast to the many years needed to achieve a working familiarity with the several thousand written characters that most educated Chinese adults have learned. Of course, most Chinese language programs simultaneously teach both the spoken and written language. It is up to the individual student to decide where to emphasize his or her needs.

4. If you do decide to write Chinese, consider learning "simplified" characters.

There are two major Chinese writing systems currently in use in the world -- "traditional" or "complicated" Chinese characters, and "simplified" Chinese characters. Traditional characters are the characters which evolved from ancient Chinese pictographs, and which have been used throughout most of Chinese history to modern times. Many of these characters are, at the same time, both beautiful and complex, requiring students of Chinese to spend many hours and nights practicing intricate "stroke orders" to properly form words. Beginning in the middle of last century, the government in Mainland China began to promulgate an alternate system of Chinese writing called "simplified" characters in an effort to dramatically increase written literacy throughout the country. For many characters, this system significantly reduces the number of brush or pen strokes required to form specific words, thereby enabling students to more quickly commit the characters to memory.

Today, simplified characters are the official script of both Mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters are still the norm in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and within most Chinese immigrant communities throughout the world. While I would still encourage students of Chinese who intend to spend many years developing and refining their abilities to begin by learning traditional characters (and only then overlay a knowledge of simplified characters), anyone seeking to accelerate his or her acquisition of the written language would do well to begin with the simplified script.

5. Take your studies seriously.

Unlike many Western languages which share some common linguistic roots with English and which can often be learned fairly quickly with a large amount of self-study, acquiring a basic competency in a language as different from English as Chinese requires a high level of commitment and perseverance. Practically speaking, this means that:

 Unless you have an unusual aptitude for learning foreign languages, you probably won't learn Chinese in a once-a-week, one-hour private session. Rather, start by looking for an established Chinese language program or workshop. Universities and dedicated language schools are a good place to start. Some colleges even offer intensive courses that cram a full year of basic Chinese into 4-8 weeks. Do your homework to find the best program.

If you still seek a tutorial, merely looking for a native speaker of Chinese to study with does not always mean you will obtain the best instruction. Chinese immigrants constitute the single largest Asian American population, representing 3+ million people nationwide, many of whom would be happy to teach new students of Chinese. However, teaching Western students to overcome the unique hurdles of the language is a special skill. If you decide on private lessons, look for a native-speaker with proven professional or private teaching credentials, as well as a roster of former student references.

Finally, practice, practice, practice. The good news is that those 3+ million Chinese Americans are our neighbors. Once you have developed basic conversational skills, go into the top Chinese communities of our country and speak. Order a lunch, buy a book, chit-chat about the weather, or ask for directions -- even if you don't need any! Westerners who have mastered Chinese will also unanimously confirm that real fluency comes only when one has spent some time in a Chinese-speaking region of Asia. So, get ready for your next business trip, take advantage of the many short-term or long-term Chinese language courses available in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, or just plan a personal or family adventure to Asia.

One of those very famous Chinese sayings says, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Well, it definitely does not need to take a "thousand miles" to learn Chinese, but now, more than ever, is the time for more Americans to take that first step.

Learn Mandarin Chinese for the future

Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University best known for predicting the U.S. housing crisis, is taking Mandarin lessons, saying it's critical to understand the main language of the world's most populous nation.

"You have to learn Mandarin," he said. "Mandarin is going to become a key language. That's the future." Roubini said that wealthy parents in New York are increasingly hiring Chinese nannies so their children pick up the language. He said if he had kids, he'd want them to learn Mandarin too.

The professor revealed his new hobby during a talk on China at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Related: Looming $500 million default to test China's banking. While Roubini said English is still the main language for business, it's important to learn Mandarin to gain a better understanding of the culture, economics and history of China.

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According to estimates, well over 900 million people are native Mandarin speakers -- roughly three times the U.S. population. The language is mainly spoken in China, Taiwan and Singapore.

While Roubini seems rather optimistic about China's rise, at least one other American investor has taken the theme a step further. Legendary American investor Jim Rogers moved to Singapore to get closer to China as the global financial crisis kicked off. He said he didn't move directly into a Chinese city because of pollution levels, but wanted to live in a city where Mandarin was spoken.