Hi Kaleidoscope_, you are fluent in Chinese Mandarin, right? If it is okay with you, do you think you could help me with a very short Mandarin lyric and English translation, please? I would really appreciate it :D
@@FluentinMandarinDotCom Hello, could you please do an episode on how to differentiate between : (1) S, SH, and X (2) Z, ZH, and J (3) C, CH, and Q Thanks in advance 🙏
Errr ... grammar in Mandarin (spoken by the Jing tribal nomads during the Sung dynasty and later as foreign rulers ofChina during the so-called Qing dynasty) is quite different from that of Cantonese (the official language spoken in the “central plains” during the Wei, Sui, and Tang dynasties). For instance “Eat first; talk later” in Mandarin would place the adverb “first” (xian) at the beginning of the sentence, as in “xian chi, zai shuo” whereas in Cantonese “first” (sin) appear almost at the end, as in “sic zo ye sin, coy king”
I have a Chinese midterm tomorrow and this was SO HELPFUL as I haven't had much time to study or dedicate time to learning. Thank you so much!!! Your pronunciation is amazing also.
Your pronunciation is real good actually. Got impressed by your very first words, I bet u love this language a lot and kind of get it flow in your blood to be pronoucing that well. Love love
I have said some really silly things in my abuse of Mandarin because I learned mainly from books where I don't hear or remember the tones. I once thought I suggested to someone to bring three of something. She came back with an umbrella. I said "san" but I used the third tone instead of the first. Before my first trip to China, several Chinese friends helped me learn the language. One day someone asked "What did you learn today?" I said what I thought meant "My head is full." He gave me a funny look. So I said it in English, and he laughed because what I really said was "I stole a bag." I said "Wo tou bao le." Bad grammar and wrong tones.
I think people say their is no grammar because in spoken china ,its more about understanding the context then the order .the ordee just helps u follow along. Im not a expect in Chinese but living in China, people are very lazy speakers and they will put words anywhere as long as its understandable ..like i was taught to always put times 1st or after the pronoun with no exception but i came to china and hurt it so much ..also when i start learning alot of useful phrases, u relize alot of them can be used and alot of different situations. Which to me is the reason i thought Chinese was more of a contextual language then a grammatical one .i told this to some of my Chinese friends, they actually agreed but my Chinese friends are not that smart tho lol sooo yea.
A small correction: In English, you would say "I sang yesterday", not "I sung yesterday". "sung" is used in a different way: "In the past, I have sung for my supper many times"
他昨天唱歌了may appear as if it meant He sung/sang yesterday, but what 了has brought to the sentance is not past tense, because we don't need tense to express what happended in the past, present or future, 昨天 does the trick very well already, why waste 了 for that? You see, 了 here is not for past tense. 我走了. is I am going, not I went. 我不去了, I am not going, not I did not go. 他昨天唱歌时嗓子有点哑。His throat was a bit sore when he sang yesterday. there is no need for 了, though 他昨天唱歌累了。 He is/was tired singing yesterday. Is or Was does not matter, being tired is the thing, 了 goes with that, not the act of singing, be it in the past or present or future. 他要是再唱就不行了。If he goes on singing, he /it will not be alright. 他昨天唱歌唱得很好。He sang (song) yesterday and he sang very well. there is not need for 了
+AIUUIO KING You're right, but this was a short video and it's designed to be a simple introduction. The reality is more subtle, but I didn't want to overcomplicate things
+David Williams The message I am trying to convey is that 了 has nothing to do with past tense which is very hard (or impossible?)to break away from the habitual thinking or logic people are so familiar hence contitioned to, so that there must be a past tense or any tense in a language. It's certainly not the case with Chinese, unfortunatey. In addition, the following expressions are good to take heed 我要走了 i am going to go now 我走了 I am going /leaving but 我不要去了 is an unclear expression. pay attention that it comes more from Chinese language learners than native speakers, Usually To say I don't want to go now， is 我不想去了 To say I am not going now, is 我不去了 to say I want to go, is 我想去 to say i want to go now ( whereas before I was now thinking to go) 我想去了 When you want to say don't do something, you use 不要, say 不要大声喧哗 ，or 不要不听老师的话， but I don't want (to do) something. is 我不想要, 我不想去
Yes, the likelihood for the 2 phrases to appear in normal conversation by native speakers is possible, though rare in a sense, but the fact is that there is an apparent disregard for tense by the measure impulse present in the minds of the speakers of languages in which tense matters. Even the more often/common used expression is 你学习汉语（学了）多长时间了？even though了s are used in or to their fullest extend, twice in one sentence, but you should notice in this case, that了is not with the main verb, i.e. it is not correct at all grammatically to say 你学习了汉语(学了)多长时间了? If了does not go with the main verb to constitute a tense, the apparent past tense we found somehow in some sense in the sentence here might be true, but the effort to link the presumed target了to that past tense hunt is surely mistaken. 了must be doing something else other than tense here. I can not think of better example so far to explain away the non-connection between了and past tense, though了 does indicate the completion of an action, (but not only that though).
The most interesting thing I found about Chinese grammar is the splitting of some verbs, called separable verb, for example; "我要跑一个小时步 我睡一个小时觉" Which literally translates to, running, "I'm going run- for one our ning" or, sleeping, "I am slee for one hour -ping "
The second character of both words are actually nouns themselves, so it’s more like “I’m going to run one hour of steps” and “I’ll sleep one hour of sleeping”.
I don't know how to explain the situation like this haha，That's a flexible way of saying it，you can say：“我要跑步一小时” and the second sentenses, I can't distinguish the tenses , so sorry , if the past tenses:”我睡了一个小时“ do not need "觉” or future tenses :“我要睡一个小时”
Hi Chris, thank you very much for the lesson. It was fascinating seeing that little window into Chinese. I’ve thought about trying to learn Chinese from time to time. I hope you won’t mind if I point out a minor mistake in your use of the past tense with the verb sing. The simple past form for sing is sang. Sung, is the perfect form, so for example, ‘I have sung Chinese songs’.
Excellent video my man. I'm going to watch your other mandarin lessons. It's helpful to have the patterns of the language all laid out and explained by a native english speaker, rather than random phrases being yelled through my speakers like most videos.
Wow, amazing. I've been studying it for some months but I have been taught almost nothing about the grammatical structure of the language so I didn't understand very well the sentences, specially how to analyze or making them. Thank you a lot!!!!!!
Chinese is my first language. Honestly, I never heard of "黑色的猫" in my whole life. It's always "黑猫" instead. For example, you say, "你看那儿有只黑猫", shocked. "黑色的猫" is simply too long to pronounce. However, I say over 95% of the materials you cover here are quite solid and true. Very resourceful.
Maybe you can help me improve my English translations of Tang poetry (chineselyricpoetry.wordpress.com/translations/). You learn Chinese and I learn English.
Yellow Crane Tower 黄鹤楼 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Crane_Tower) by 崔颢 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_Hao_(poet)) 昔人已乘黄鹤去 此地空余黄鹤楼 黄鹤一去不复返 白云千载空悠悠 晴川历历汉阳树 芳草萋萋鹦鹉洲 日暮乡关何处是 烟波江上使人愁 - my personal translation - Yellow Crane Tower by Cui, Hao So gone was he upon a yellow crane, To leave behind this Huang-he Tow'r in here. The feathery clouds remain forev'r the same; The yellow crane was gone to nev'r appear. On Parrot Isle is pasture em'rald green; In Han-yang woods is river crystal clear. But where is home with sunset almost nigh? Like growing river mist my grief is dear. If you can't write Tang poetry, you can't say your Chinese is intermediate. If you can't write Song contractual lyrics, you can't say your Chinese is advanced enough. If you really want to learn Chinese as your first language, you really have to set the bar a lot higher. Poetry is the spirit of the Chinese language, never to be missed. No other culture in the world has such a high regard for poetry, not even French. If you can write Tang poetry, you are already way above 大山 in your mastery of the language, a household name in China and probably the first foreigner considered very fluent in Chinese. It's your bragging right.
I thought that "de" was always 的 (1:20) but I notice that you have used 3 different characters, at 7:12 you have 地 and at 7:47 you have 得. Is it simply that 的 is to make an adjective, 地 makes an adverb, and 得 is for attributes of a verb? Can you explain a bit more about the difference between the last two (地, 得) as their usage seems similar? Thanks, Chris.
+Nilguiri 的 得 and 地 are all pronounced 'de'. 地 comes after an adjective to make it an adverb, 得 comes after a verb to introduce the manner or a attribute to the verb, and 的 is sometimes used with adjectives, but can do other things too (it indicates the relationship between two parts of a sentence)
+Nilguiri This is a big problem in Mandarin which makes even the native speakers very confused about when to use which one. However, these three words are pronounced differently in most other Chinese languages. This tells one of the disadvantages in Mandarin.
Nice! I usually go to 中欧人来时 on RU-vid. Your explanation, however, is much more simple to understand. I’ve been paying for weekly online lessons from Beijing and, more recently, my teacher has also become my language exchange - 完美 🤩🎷
I have stopped the video to ask where you are from; the last time I saw 'sung' for the English simple past was in reading Jane Austen! Very helpful video, by the way. Thank you.
The word order with the Subjekt at the beginning and the verb at the end with various other elements between is *immediately* recognizable to German speakers, as that is *exactly* our word order, albeit only in subordinate clauses. P.S.: I don't want to nitpick such an excellent video, but the simple past tense of "sing" is "sang," not "sung." That's the past participle
Can you say: "Wo hui yao change" to imply you will sing in an indefinite future, without the precision of needing to say exactly when (foregoing "mingtian") . Keep up the good work, brother.
It's funny you picked these sentences as I am living with many black cats here, and I am a singer so my first Manderin was about these subjects. Thanks for the grammer lessons it helped me tremendously, still can't fix my southern accent. ( Xingxang city)
I just started working at a boba shop and decided to try to learn a bit of Chinese since all the other workers are Chinese. Maybe i will be able to understand some words they are saying hehe this video is very clearly explaining everything, it already helped me a bit to get a general view of the language XD thank you!
Yes. Sung is the past participle and must always be followed by the auxiliary verb (to be). So, I have sung this song before (present perfect tense). I sang it on your wedding day (past simple tense). It’s also used in the passive voice like you said - this song was sung by you.
As a student of Japanese, I just got so curious about the language which Japanese got its alphabet from! I always thought Chinese had an effect on the actual grammar of Japanese, but evidently it wasn't a very direct descendant. Japanese is an SOV language, meaning you would say "I sushi like" (僕はおすしがすきですよ) but here he showed that Chinese is SVO like English with "You like cats" (ni xihuan mao - I don't have the right tone accents on my keyboard) Really cool beans
This was very helpful! I love C-dramas and I've picked up some words/phrases/characters, but I'd get confused by the sentence structure and how it was translated into English.
I like that all you have to do to change the tense of something is put a character at the end. Very simple. I also noticed that "de" approximately means "of" in English, but there are different characters used to express "of" depending on context. The only question I have is in the last example. When he says "I sing well", why must he say "sing" twice? Wouldn't once be sufficient? I also noticed that when I typed "flame" into google translate. It came out as "火焰", but couldn't "火" be sufficient enough to express the idea of flame? Why does Chinese repeat ideas twice? If "flame" is considered a more serious problem than "fire", then couldn't it be written as "大火"? Do most Chinese adhere to the repetition rule, or do they do the same thing that I just did?
Kind of, but it's not quite as simple as 'adding a character' in all cases. Most 'words' in modern Chinese are made up of two characters, this is how the language has evolved.
We do use "火” more much frequently than "火焰”(and this has a more formal vibe). But we also tend to use two-character words in modern Chinese compare to single character words in classical Chinese, in order to, among other things, reduce phonetic ambiguities.
For the singing part, it's because when you use 得 you must put it just after a verb. In this example the verb is only 唱 while 歌 is a noun as the object. Therefore if you want to link a descriptive term to the end of the sentence 他唱歌 using 得, the verb 唱 must be repeated to ensure 得 is placed next to the verb consecutively.
It is used by uneducated or lazy people. This practice of interchanging the past participle and the simple past came from ghetto slang or sometimes hillbillies in the backwoods. This is nothing to be proud of or emulated.
Explaining "le" as a past tense marker can be confusing. "Le" emphasizes the actualization/completion of an action. You can just say, "Wo3 zuo2-tian1 chang4 ge1. "Le" has other meanings, e.g., new situation: Xia4 yu3 le, means "Descend rain le", it is raining.
If you want to express I sing every day at home with friends, you can also change the order of different parts like saying I everyday with friends sing at home, or I at home everyday with friends sing, or even sometimes saying I everyday with friends sing at home etc.
I think he's simply misspoken. I can't find any indication that British English uses sung as the simple past version. I'm relatively sure it should still be sang.
sung is a past participle not the imperfect tense. In Germanc languages: sing sang, sung - see, saw, seen These are regular strong verbs - Look, looked, looked regular weak verb.
Here's a lesson in English grammar. It's "sang," not "sung." "Sung" requires a so-called helping verb such as "had." "I sang yesterday," but "I had sung yesterday." This is one of the ten biggest mistakes people make learning English grammar.
Chinese does not have any of the complications of the Western European languages, such as the different genders of the article, tenses, singular and plural forms, etc
Well strictly speaking it was explained in under 9 minutes :-) Very interesting, I now have a much better understanding of why Chinese speakers often mangle English grammar, they're using Chinese grammar. Makes perfect sense.
this is the same as saying I, everyday at home with friends, sing. Inside the commas (in english its considered unimportant and extra info) is the extra info. Basically its the same as english in a way.
My CN teacher expects us to get the grammar right by giving us 1 example and never explaining how to use the word properly. Yet docks off points when our grammar is off. That’s why I’m here.
Same here. I love my tutor but she keeps plowing ahead with new words and phrases without me mastering the basics of CN grammar. Then she asks me to use these new words in complete sentences and I sound like a drooling, smooth brain gweilo.
What I noticed is since there is no conjugation every sentence and word has a set base meaning that needs a particle to change the meaning. So “Nǐ xǐhuan hēisè de māo” means “You like black cats” until you add ‘ma’ particle which makes it a question.
I understand these very simple examples, but native language seems to have totally different rules and structures compared to the simple ones we see in textbooks :-(
The good thing in Chinese is, that this language has nearly no grammar! No conjugation, no declination, words does not change. You can learn directly words from dictionary and put this in a sentences in a special order. That is nearly all. Long sentence are build like this: Who - When - Where - How - making -What. Now you can substitute these words. For Who you can substitude you, I, we etc. For example: Tomorrow I will study with my friend German in the university of Hambug I (who) tomorrow (when) in the university of Hamburg (where) with my friend (how) study (making) German (what) Wo3 yao4 - ming2 tian1- zai han4 bao3 da4 xue2- gen1 wo2 peng2 you3 - xue2 xi2 - de2 wen2 我 要 明 天 在 汉 堡 大 学 跟 我 朋 友 学 习 德 文. 我 wo3 = I, my 要 yao4 = will 明 天 ming2 tian1 = tomorrow 在 zai4 = in (to be in) 汉 堡 han4 bao3 = Hamburg 大 学 da4 xue2 = university 跟 gen1 = with 朋 友 peng2 you3 = friend 学 习 xue2 xi2 = to learn, to study 德 文 de2 wen2 = German language A short sentence which have the same word order like in English or German have to do with this structure above. You can reduce "Who - When - Where - How - making -What." to "How - making - what" I learn German 我 学 习 德 文. I will learn German 我 要 学 习 德 文. Some other special things is in Chinese to use counting words 一 个 人 a piece human 一 本 书 a piece book 这 三 辆 车 this 3 piece vehicles The kind of counting word depend on the for of an object, Everthing, what is countable, must have a counting word.
Helpful! A note in English if you say this: "Tomorrow I will study with my friend German" it means your friend is called German and you will study with him/her tomorrow! Instead you should say: "Tomorrow I will study German with my friend"
Your accent is familiar and comfortable for me.I am a native Chinese speaker from mainland China.Your pronounciation is better than mine.Clear and standard.I guess you learned Mandarin in China.Have a nice day!
I'll just have to download this to build a more analytical model for my own unique learning process. There's too much to learn thru this video. Thx mate.
