Any student of the Chinese language, sooner or later, will come across the so-called bureaucratic terms, which are difficult to distinguish one from another, difficult to remember and even more difficult to translate. Bureaucracy is meant as the collective apparatus and people to which is entrusted the administration of a State, and Chinese bureaucracy is […]

The determiner and the determined In Chinese, elements such as adjectives, specifications and possessives can appear to the left of other components to specify attributes, modality and characteristics. These elements are conventionally defined as determiners because they determine the component that proceeds them. The determiners, therefore, specify something from “something else”. The component being specified

Before speaking about classifiers, it’s good to review the numbers 1 to 10 because they are indispensable for numerical constructions: 1: 一 (yī) 2: 二 (èr) 3: 三 (sān) 4: 四 (sì) 5: 五 (wǔ) 6: 六 (liù) 7: 七 (qī) 8: 八 (bā) 9: 九 (jiǔ) 10: 十 (shí) Classifiers Now that we’ve reviewed

Adjectives In Chinese, adjectives are called predicative adjectives because they have an intrinsic predicate value, in other words they posses the value given by the verb “to be”. The adjective 漂亮 (piàoliang), for example, is translated as “to be beautiful” (meaning feminine beauty); 帅气 (shuàiqi) is translated as “to be handsome” (meaning male beauty), 新

In this article we’ll discuss the doubling of verbs, nouns and classifiers, are one of the most evident and common peculiarities of Chinese grammar. Besides, who’s never said “一点点 (yī̠diạ̌ndiǎn)”? Let’s start with classifiers to then move on to nouns, verbs and predicative adjectives. The doubling of classifiers The classifiers, which we’ve already covered in

In the Chinese language, the verb can be followed or preceded by several specific particles that specify its meaning. These specific particles, the majority of the time, are pronounced in the neutral tone.

In this article we’ll see the particles that indicate the aspect of the verb.

In Chinese, the active or passive voice is not compulsorily marked by a particular character. If a subject is present in a phrase – which may also be implicit – the phrase has an active sense; if, instead no subject is present, the phrase has a passive sense. Here are some examples: Active sense (the

The Chinese language often allows the juxtaposition of two adjectives and or verbs without the help of any element of which a language like Italian or English would use. This juxtaposition is commonly known as “serial constructions”.

Let’s clear up the concept right away: a serial constructions consists of two (or more) verbal predicates that share the same subject and follow one another without the use of conjunctions (or commas).

In Chinese there are different types of serial constructions that are divided according to the meaning that they wish to express.

Like every other place on this planet, even in China there’s a recurring use of slang, or a series of expressions and words that make up a jargon in place of the common language. Slang, in Chinese (俚语, liyu), covers a vast gamut of types: local dialect, jargon and also insults and curses (which we

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