How to Express an Ongoing State or a Continuity of an Action in Chinese
In Chinese, and unlike in English, people don’t change the form of a word to express the ongoing continuity of an action or a state of being. Instead, Chinese focuses…
Mastering the Use of “和” in Mandarin: Avoid Common Mistakes
We've all learned the word "和" in our first Chinese classes. However, research shows that Mandarin students at the beginner level tend to make mistakes with this word more than…
How to Learn Chinese Fast: 9 Tips
Many audiences often ask me: Hey Jing, how to learn Mandarin Chinese fast? Maybe in 3 or 5 days? Me: Are we talking about A.I. or something? Questions like this…
“越来越” (yuè lái yuè) VS “越…越…” (yuè…yuè…): Two Similar Phrases But With Different Uses
Introduction We are all familiar with the basic English expression “more and more”, an expression which actually exists in many languages. Chinese is no exception. Chinese learners are taught these…
Mastering Existential Sentences(存现句) in Mandarin
Let’s now look at ‘存现句’, which are called Existential Sentences. Existential Sentences are an especially useful structure in Mandarin. Chinese people use it to express the existence, appearance, or disappearance…
Complex Structure in Chinese: Pivotal Sentence
This time, we are going to talk about ‘兼语句’ (Jiānyǔjù), Pivotal sentence, which is a special structure that plays an important role in Chinese. I believe many learners willhave or…
Separable Words in Chinese (离合词): Breaking Down the Complexity of the Language
In Chinese, you can use either “帮助” (bāngzhù) or “帮忙”(bāngmáng) to mean "help." But, if you say "帮忙他" (bāngmáng tā) to say "help him", your Chinese teacher will correct you.…
Making Comparisons in Chinese – All about bǐ-structure(比字句)
Comparing things or people is a common practice in daily life. We make comparisons using various attributes like length, weight, size, age, and so on. The most commonly used comparative…
Constructing Passive Sentences in Chinese Using “被字句”(Bèi-structure)
In Chinese, the use of “passive sentences” is fairly common and foreigners who are not used to passive sentences are often confused by them when learning the language. So ,…