Six Sentences in Chinese
February 14th, 2009 | View Comments
Many of the language blogs I’ve found in the last few weeks have discussed Tim Ferriss’s “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour”. He provides six illustrative sentences that will help you tease apart the basic structure of a language in a short period of time.
- The apple is red.
- It is John’s apple.
- I give John the apple.
- We give him the apple.
- He gives it to John.
- She gives it to him.
In Chinese, the six sentences are (followed by the literal word-for-word English translation):
- 蘋果是紅的.
Ping2 guo3 shi4 hong2 de5.
Apple is red [possessive marker]. - 是 John 的蘋果.
Shi4 John de5 ping2 guo3.
Is John [possessive marker] apple. - 我給 John 蘋果 (了).
Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
I give John apple (marker to indicate an action is completed). - 我們給他蘋果 (了).
Wo3 men2 gei3 ta1 ping2 guo3 (le5).
I [plural marker] give him/her apple (marker to indicate an action is completed). - 他給 John (了).
Ta1 gei3 John (le5).
He/She give John (marker to indicate an action is completed). - 她給他 (了).
Ta1 gei3 ta1 (le5).
She give he/she (marker to indicate an action is completed).
From the above, it’s clear that Chinese deals with the following grammatical structures quite differently than English (and for the record, I’ve had zero formal instruction in Chinese grammar—I picked it up the way native speakers do so this may not be 100% accurate):
- Articles. Chinese does not have a definite article like “the”. Chinese does have indefinite and partitive articles, but they are used a bit differently than in English—you can drop them if it’s clear what you mean from context.
- Verb conjugation. Does not exist in Chinese. Tense is inferred through context.
This creates a certain amount of ambiguity in translation. The first sentence above could mean “The apple is red.” But it could also mean “Apples are red.” In the right context, it could even mean “This apple is red,” or “These apples are red.”
- Possessives. In Chinese, possession is marked by the word 的 which has no real English translation. 的 is used when a person possesses an object, but also when an object possesses a particular property, like being red.
- The existence of 了. There is no real English equivalent of this marker. And while it’s not strictly necessary to put it in, not doing it at all will give your Chinese a stilted, I-learned-it-from-school feel.
- Pronouns. The same word 他 is used for he, she, him, and her. If there’s a need to specify female gender, you can use 她. There is a neuter pronoun 它, which can mean “it”, but it’s not used in quite the same way. We, 我們, is literally “I, plural”. And though it’s not illustrated in the sentences above, they, 他們, is literally “he/she plural”.
There is a notable similarity between English and Chinese though—both follow subject-verb-object patterns.
Knowing these kinds of things up front could definitely be useful in learning a language (or not, if you subscribe to the no grammar school of language learning).
It’s also worth knowing if you’re interested in language education/language psychology. When people make errors in a second language, it’s likely not a random error. Most errors are due to interference from the first language.
For example, my mom is pretty much the stereotypical Chinese Lady with Broken English. She is fluent, in the sense that she can live and work in the US just fine. But she rarely says or writes an English sentence that isn’t riddled with grammatical errors.
Almost all of her errors fall into one of these categories:
- Pronoun errors. Despite being fully aware that I am female, my mom refers to me as “he” maybe half the time.
- Subject/verb agreement.
- Verb conjugation/stem errors. My favorite of this category is when she says “I am confusing” when she means “I am confused.”
In other words, she tends to make errors when English grammar has rules that don’t exist in Chinese!
Yvonne posted this on February 14th, 2009 @ 11:47pm in Chinese, Grammar, Language Psychology | Permalink to "Six Sentences in Chinese"
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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Oh, the memories of my course in Chinese Syntax. What we have come to think of as “grammar” is actually syntax (the study of sentence structure) and morphology (the study of word structure). In linguistics, the term “grammar” is used as an umbrella term to describe phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.
You are correct in that Chinese is very minimal in morphological markers. In English, we have: -s, -ing,-ly, etc. These help indicate tense, parts of speech, etc. whereas Chinese doesn’t have any.
While Chinese is short on morphological markers, it does have syntactic markers that fulfill the same role. However, syntactically, there are structural rules that dictate where things can and cannot go. For the most part, Chinese follows a subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence construction. Changing the sentence construction can affect the semantics. Take for example:
1. 蘋果是紅的.
Ping2 guo3 shi4 hong2 de5.
Apple is red [possessive marker]
We can keep all the words, but put them in a different order:
2. 是紅的蘋果.
Shi4 hong2 de5 ping2 guo3 .
Most native Chinese will agree that sentence 2 also refers to the redness of an apple, but the sentences are not necessarily identical in meaning. Sentence 2 emphasizes the fact that the apple is red, as opposed to green.
In Chinese, many times, a native speaker will bring a direct object to the front of the sentence for emphasis.
Likewise with the past-tense marker 了, le5. Let’s compare the following sentences:
3. 我給 John 蘋果 (了).
Wo3 gei3 John ping2 guo3 (le5).
I give John apple (marker to indicate an action is completed).
and
4. 我給(了)John 蘋果.
Wo3 gei3 (le5) John ping2 guo3
Sentence 3 states that the entire event of me giving John the apple and his reception of the apple all happened in the past tense. Sentence 4 puts the past tense emphasis on the giving of the apple. John’s reception of the apple is implied but it is not necessarily so.
There is also the much debated ba-construction to indicate past tense, but I won’t go into that.
If you’re writing in traditional characters, remember that there are more characters than just 他, 她, and 它–there’s also 祂 (biblical He) and 牠 (for animals).
Thanks for the reminder! I’d totally forgotten those even existed.