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13 Mandarin Chinese Grammar Patterns and Structures We Love to Hate

The conventional wisdom is that Mandarin Chinese grammar is easy.

After all, the hard parts are Chinese tones, characters, and chengyu, right?

If you’re no longer a newbie, you might be cursing that conventional wisdom right now.

Because we all know that intermediate or advanced Chinese grammar is actually really hard.

Here are tips on Chinese grammar patterns and structures that I wish I’d heard when I started learning Chinese grammar.

Why Chinese Grammar Patterns and Structures Are So Hard
Before digging in, let’s discuss some of the reasons why Chinese grammar is difficult.

First, the word order in a sentence is different from English, and this requires getting used to. (But not always – here is a simple introduction to some Chinese sentence structures).

Second, there are new concepts that have no real counterpart in English (eg. 了) – and these can throw you in for a loop because there is no analogue.

Third, there are Chinese grammar patterns and structures which seem to be deceivingly similar. It’s easy to think they’re interchangeable. But they’re not!

Because of these challenges, learning Mandarin Chinese grammar rules unfortunately tends to require a lot of discipline and trial and error (and enduring tons of Chinese grammar exercises).

Perhaps this blog post can help with that. Perhaps it can be a sort of Chinese grammar guide for those of you just starting out.

And just so you know, for the sake of (relative) brevity, this post only addresses the most common usages of these grammar words.

We’ve tried to distill the essence of what you need to know.

Without further ado, here we go…

Common Chinese Grammar Structures for 的 (de) vs. 得 (de) vs. 地(de)
They even sound the same! How can words be so similar, without meaning the same thing?

It boils down to this main difference: 的 is used with nouns and 得 is used with verbs. The last one, 地, is mainly used to modify verbs (like the “ly” in English).

1. Noun + 的 + Noun

Possessive words (my, your, her, his, our, their, etc.) don’t directly translate into one word in Chinese, you add 的 to the end of the pronoun (I – 我) to make it possessive (My – 我＋的）.

For example:

我的书
wǒ de shū
my book

2. Attribute + 的 + Noun

When 的 is used between an attribute and noun, it gives the noun the attribute:

很漂亮的老师
hěn piàoliang de lǎoshī
pretty teacher

3. Verb + 得 + State

This particle is used after a verb and indicates effect, degree, possibility, etc:

飞得快
fēi de kuài
to fly quickly

4. Adj + 地 + Verb

This particle is mainly used as an adverb, like “ly” in English. It’s used before a verb.

For example:

慢慢地走
màn màn de zǒu
to walk slowly

5. Adj + 地 + Adj

地 can also be used to modify/qualify an adjective:

特别地珍贵
tè bié de zhēn guì
Particularly precious

Common Chinese Grammar Patterns for 吗 (ma) vs. 吧 (ba) vs. 呢 (ne)
So maybe your mind was blown when you first heard about question words – words which convert sentences into questions when they’re placed at the end of a sentence.

Now you have more question words than you know what to do with. How should you distinguish between them?

In short, 吗 is for yes-no questions. 吧 is for making suggestions or requests. 呢 is for shifting the conversation to another topic or the other person.

6. Clause +  吗

It might be helpful to think of this as the equivalent of a question mark. The answer to a 吗 question should be yes or no (or to be more precise, confirm or negate the verb).

For example:

你会说中文吗?
nǐ huì shuō zhōng wén ma?
Can you speak Chinese?

7.  Clause + 吧

Unlike 吗 or 呢, 吧 doesn’t always indicate a question. It’s commonly used when making a suggestion or request. Much like “how about…” or “let’s…” in English.

However, you can also add it to the end of a statement, and it suggests that you’re seeking confirmation (like “…right?” in English):

我们出去吃饭吧
wǒ men chū qù chī fàn ba
How about we go eat? (or lets go eat!)

8.  Clause + 呢

呢 is a great way to shift the conversation to another topic, or the other person.

Answers to a 呢 question don’t have to be a simple yes or no (unlike 吗), and can be more open ended. The English equivalent is “and…” or “and what about…”

For example:

我过得很好，你呢
wǒ guò de hěn hǎo, nǐ ne
I‘ve been well, you?

Common Chinese Grammar Patterns for 会 (huì) vs. 能 (néng)

So 会 and 能 both mean “can,” but they don’t mean the same thing. What’s the difference?

The bottom line: 会 is for learned knowledge or the future. 能 is for physical ability, and for indicating permission. 

9. 会 + Verb

会 most commonly means “can” or “able to,” specifically for learned knowledge. Use it for acquired skills, not abilities which you were born with.

For example:

他会做饭
Tā huì zuò fàn
He can cook

会 is also often used for “will”, or “will be”:

你会去吗?
nǐ huì qù ma?
Will you go?

10. 能 + Verb

Use 能 to indicate that you’re physically able to do something or complete a task.

你能帮我一个忙?
Nǐ néng bāng wǒ yī gè máng 吗?
Can you help me for a minute?

Unlike 会 (but similar to 可以) 能 can also mean “be allowed to” or “may do.”

在室内不能抽烟
zài shì nèi bù néng chōu yān
Smoking not allowed inside

Common Chinese Grammar Patterns for 想 (xiǎng) vs. 觉得 (juéde)
想 and 觉得 both mean to think or feel, so what’s the difference?

想 is most commonly used to casually express that you want to do something. 觉得 is mainly used to express your opinion about something.

11. 想 + Verb

Use 想 when you feel like (doing something):

我想吃东西
wǒ xiǎng chī dōngxi
I want to eat something.

12. 觉得 + Verb

Use 觉得 when you’re expressing your opinion about something.

我觉得很好吃
wǒ juéde hěn hǎo chī
I think it tastes good.

Common Chinese Grammar Patterns for 了
Finally, we’re at 了, the most frustrating Chinese grammar pattern that I’ve personally ever learned.

了 is used to indicate the completion of an action, or a change of circumstances.

13. Verb + 了

了 is mainly used in 2 situations. First, it’s placed after a verb (or occasionally adjective) to indicate completion of an action, which usually indicates the past tense. (It’s also important to note that there are cases when it is used to indicate the expected completion of an action – in that case it’s not necessarily past tense.)

我吃了饭以后要出去
wǒ chī le fàn yǐ hòu yào chū qù
After I’m done eating, I want to go out

Aside from signaling the completion of a specific verb, when 了 is added to the end of a sentence, it that a new state exists.

我饿了
wǒ è le
I’m hungry (I wasn’t hungry before, but now I am.)

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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.