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Directional complements In the Chinese language, there are verbs of motion that, besides movement, also express direction. These verbs can be used transitively and intransitively, and are conventionally divided into two groups: The first group is made up of the verbs 来 (lái) “to come” and 去 (qù) “to go” Here are some examples: 老师来了。 […]

Idiomatic expressions in the Chinese language (习惯用语, xiguan yongyu), literally “common use expressions”, are widely used in the spoken Chinese language. In this article we’ll only see a few of them. Besides giving you the “exact” definition of single expressions, I will also insert the literal translation, which is not unusually more suitable than the

According to my personal experience, the Chinese numeric system is one of the most complicated aspects of the Chinese language, especially when it comes to numbers greater than 10,000. For this reason I decided to write this article in the hopes that I can help those poor students of the Chinese language that are facing

In this article, we’ll seek to illustrate the main prepositions used in the modern Chinese language. Prepositions that indicate the beneficiary of an action carried out by someone else 给 (gěi) “for” 他给我买了一本书。 Tā gěi wǒ mǎi le yī běn shū. He bought a book for me. 爸爸给我买了的书，我很喜欢。 Bàba gěi wǒ mǎi de shū, wǒ

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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World is small. And the internet is even smaller. In early February I joined the Hacking Chinese Characters Challenge. One of the rules decided by the guy that proposed the challenge, Olle Linge from Hacking Chinese (check it, it’s one of the best resources out there to learn Chinese), was that we had to connect

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