Basic Sentence Structure (Part 2 of Lesson 4)

[Qinai de Jerry]

Basic Sentence Pattern:

(Here are some more examples with English rendered sentences,
somewhat literal, so that you can see the structure of the Chinese
sentences.)

Noun - Adverb - Verb - Object

Chinese: Wo bu shi zhongguoren.
Tone Marks:Wo3 bu4 shi4 zhong1guo3ren2.
English: I am not a Chinese (person).

Chinese: Ni ye shi zhongguoren ma?
Tone Marks: Ni3 ye3 shi4 zhong1guo3ren2 ma5?
English: Are you also a Chinese (person)?

Vocabulary Build-up:

bu - no, not
zhongguoren - chinese person
ni - you (singular). nin2 (plural)
ye - also, too
ma - question particle

Characters:

www.csulb.edu/~txie/azi/b2bb.gif [/img] bu - no, not

- zhongguoren

ni - you (singular)

nin - you (plural)

ye - also, too

ma - question particle

Note:

As you begin learning Chinese, you will notice some major differences between the structure of Chinese and English sentences.
Unlike English, Chinese is not an inflected language, rather it relies on word order to convey the meaning.
In Chinese, the basic syntax of a question is the same as that of a statement, whereas in English it is usually not. Question
particles are placed on the last part of the sentence.