Ruthi
How to make sentences? I have lots of nouns in Chinese but I don't seem to be able to learn phrases and sentences.I have only a couple of verbs and I don't seem to be able to move beyond "I have " "I don't have" ,"I want" and those kind of simple sentences. What to do ? How can I progress?
Nov 25, 2014 6:41 PM
Answers · 10
2
I recommend two steps. The first is to watch the following video, which provides "The Golden Rule" of constructing a sentence in Chinese. (This is what Tong was alluding to in her answer.) https://www.yoyochinese.com/learn-Chinese/chinese-grammar/Lesson-1-Chinese-word-order-Part-1 What you will notice is that, to construct any sentence beyond SVO (subject-verb-object), you will need adverbial phrases about when, where, and how. You will see that merely learning more verbs and more nouns will not help you move beyond simple SVO sentences. The second step is to learn the 150 words from HSK1. http://www.visualmandarin.com/tools/hsk-vocabulary/level-1 These 150 words have been chosen both because they're common, and because they provide all the 'pieces' necessary to construct full sentences. The HSK vocabulary is a good choice because there are various websites, videos, and apps that are dedicated to helping you learn these particular words. "The Golden Rule" gives you the sentence 'structure', and HSK1 gives you the 'pieces' to add to that structure. I hope this helps. Good luck!
November 27, 2014
1
The most simple sentence: subject + verb or subject + adjective, just like you said "I have " "I don't have" ,"I want" . And basis of this, you can add the correct adverbial or adjective or noun or all of them to complete your sentences. For example, I want=subject + verb, means "我想", and you can add "something". I want an apple=subject + verb+ noun, means 我想要一个苹果。 And then you can add another verb, I want to eat an apple=subject + verb+verb+ noun, means 我想要吃一个苹果。 Now you can add "when it happen" I want to eat an apple today 我今天想要吃一个苹果。 Of course you can change the time just like 我明天想要吃一个苹果/我后天想要吃一个苹果。Everything is stay the same except the time. I think Chinese sentences just like math. Add whatever you want.:)
November 26, 2014
1
Generally in Chinese we can devide sentence in to three types in different context: 陈述句,疑问句,感叹句. 陈述句(Declaretive sentence) is somethine you use to state a fact or idea. Mostly you use it when telling people about something. Here we can further subdivide this type into affirmative sentence and negetive sentence. For instance, I want(我要XXX) and I don't want(我不要XXXX). And as for detail sentence structure and grammer, in Chinese we also have nouns, verbs, and adj and adv, something like that. I'm not going to go too deep here because it's a too big topic to talk. But basically it's structure are very similiar with those in English as long as you know what those words really means. 疑问句(Question sentence). Literally this is what you use to raise a question. Did you eat something? 你吃了嘛? Question like this is about facts. And for reasoning in Chinese, we use 为什么 just like "why". Why are you late for school?你为什么迟到? 感叹句(Exclaimation). This is used when you express strong emotion. Like how beatiful the mountain is! 这山多漂亮啊! I just can't imagine he did it!我没想到他竟然做到了! Finally, I would like to say still I think the general grammer for Chinese is pretty similiar to those in English. In this moment I would suggest you to listen and talk more to local people, whether online or offline. Don't worry too much about the grammer in the very beginning stage because even you place the sentence in a very odd way, native people can still understand it someway by guessing. The most important thing therefore now, is to know more meaning and usage of some basic words. Good luck! Welcomed to contact me for further questions:)
November 26, 2014
Thanks I think I am stuck on the first kind.. declaratives those are the only ones I know how to do.@shevelen8 I have only a frew verbs (go,eat,drink,want,) finding it difficult to learn more!
November 26, 2014
it's time to learn verbs now
November 26, 2014
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