In English, it’s common to see phrases like “a beautiful park”, “an interesting person”, “a big room”, etc. You don’t need to put anything between an adjective and a noun in these cases. In Chinese, things get a bit more complicated. You will need to add 的 (de)...
Some Chinese learners also mix up “hái shì(还是)” with “huò zhě(或者)” as they both mean “or”. However, there is a big difference between “hái shì(还是)” and “huò zhě(或者)” when it comes to the usage of these two words. “hái shì(还是)” is usually used to ask questions such as...
In Chinese, both “bù(不)” and “méi(没)” can be used to negate a verb. However, when it comes to the verb “to have”, which is “yǒu(有)”, you can only say “méi yǒu(没有)” to express the negatives “not have”. NEVER EVER say “bù yǒu(不有)”, because there is no such word. Here...
When Chinese learners are making sentences, they sometimes have problems with the unfamiliar sentence structure. As a beginner, learning these four structures by heart will help you avoid committing grammatical mistakes when creating simple Chinese sentences:...
Many Chinese learners are told that “ma(吗)” is used at the end to form a question. However, this statement is not always correct even when creating basic questions. “Ma(吗)” needs to be added at the end of a yes-no question only. For questions like “Where are you?”,...
The Chinese word “hé(和)” is another basic, but important word which is often misused by Chinese learners. Although its equivalent meaning in English is indeed “and”, when it comes to the usage of this word, we need to get rid of our “English way of thinking”. In...
