A field guide for learners Chinese Stative Verbs What English treats as adjectives, Chinese treats as a special kind of verb — one that describes a mood, the weather, an appearance, or a quality, without ever needing “to be” alongside it. The concept What Is a Stative Verb? Stative verbs — also called Chinese adjectives…
Category: HSK 1
Quantity Complements 1
OneDotDot Chinese Grammar · HSK 1 Grammar Point · HSK 1 數量補語数量补语 shùliàng bǔyǔ — Quantity Complement 1 When you want to say how many times you’ve done something, Chinese adds a little word right after the verb — a quantity complement. This part covers 次次 cì and 遍遍 biàn, the two most common ones….
有 yǒu Sentence 1
OneDotDot Chinese Grammar · HSK 1 Grammar Point · HSK 1 有 yǒu — “To Have, There Is” The “you sentence,” known as 有字句 yǒuzìjù有字句 yǒuzìjù in Chinese, is built around the word 有 yǒu有 yǒu. This article covers its three most basic jobs: possession (“to have”), existence at a place (“there is/are”), and introducing…
一邊/一边 yìbiān
Grammar Point:The term 一邊一边 yìbiān…一邊一边 yìbiān… is used to express the idea of doing one thing while doing another thing simultaneously, with both actions being intentional. It emphasizes that the two actions are happening at the same time and are equally important. If you want to express that something happened while another thing was happening,…
Seafood in Chinese
Food Vocabulary 海鮮鲜Seafood in Chinese Squid, cuttlefish, and octopus alone have at least half a dozen overlapping Chinese names between them — even native speakers mix them up. Work through shrimp, crab, shellfish, cephalopods, and a handful of other seafood staples, then a few phrases for ordering. 01 — 蝦類 Shrimp Chinese English Korean Japanese…
Abbreviations of Chinese Grammar Terms
A field guide for learners Abbreviations of Chinese Grammar Terms Every grammar term you meet in a Chinese textbook comes with a small-print abbreviation — n., v., adj. — borrowed straight from English. Taiwan and mainland China don’t always agree on the term itself, though. Here’s both, side by side. Word-level — parts of speech,…
Chinese Measure Words
A field guide for learners Chinese Measure Words A flock of birds. A herd of cows. English has measure words too — it’s just optional. Chinese uses them constantly, and skipping one isn’t a stylistic choice; it’s a mistake. The basics What Is a Measure Word? In English, you can say “There is a flock…
Moon Festival
Moon Festival — OneDotDot Chinese Chinese Festivals · 中國節日中国节日 Moon Festival 中秋節中秋节 zhōngqiūjié 中秋節中秋节 zhōngqiūjié falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon turns into a perfect circle. It’s a night of worshipping the moon and giving thanks for the harvest. Families gather, much like Taiwan and China’s answer to…
Expressing locations in Chinese
OneDotDot Chinese Grammar · HSK 1 Grammar Point · HSK 1 在 zài + 方位詞 fāngwèicí Chinese expresses location by pairing the preposition 在 zài with a locative word — a small set of position terms that do a lot of work. The good news: once you know the ten locative words below, you can…
Question Words in Chinese
Grammar Point:If we exclude particle question words, there are 9 question words in Chinese: what, when, where, how, who, which, why, and 2 variations of “how many”. However, unlike in English, these question words stay in the same position in the answer sentence, without the need to reverse the order or add an extra adverb….