I hope this video helps you get a better grasp of why native Chinese speakers sometimes leave out “的 (de)”. If you have any confusion about certain grammar points, feel free to let me know. It might become a topic for one of my future videos! :)
@@GraceMandarinChinese Grace! I came up with a Really Fun Method to memorize Chinese Characters easily! What's the best way to send this info to you? Email? It's mind-blowingly effective!!!
I've only been learning Mandarin properly for about 3 weeks (although I've been interested in it for a year or so) but so far the exceptions I've found have largely made sense. This is another one. It's makes perfect sense to me that native speakers would leave out "de" in common phrases, especially since there's no other way to interpret the phrases (for instance, "I father" doesn't mean anything on its own so it only makes sense to interpret as "my father"). I've also been very excited with the level of consistency and logic in the language. All languages have some level of logic and consistency but Mandarin seems much better than most. For instance, translating "tasty" as "good to-eat"? It makes perfect sense! When the course I was following got to past-tense verbs I panicked a bit because I thought I was going to have to learn a whole new set of verbs... but nope, you just put "le" on the end and it becomes past-tense (unlike English.... "eat-ate", "bring-brought", "find-found", etc. - although to be fair, people will understand what you mean if you say "eated" or "finded" lol). I'm sure I'll discover more exceptions to these rules as I learn more but I've already gone much further with less exceptions than I did in German or Spanish.
ThaNk you for making both traditional and simplified. Your video really helps me to study Chinese traditional. Now I can compare traditional and simplified.
We came from different places- And the time to unite is now! We are here to unite the People! We do this by learning each others' languages & cultures in massive numbers! Will you answer the call? The Great Awakening!!!
Thank you, this is a tricky topic, and it feels like this is one of those usages that people will better understand as they keep speaking more, rather than something that can be mastered immediately with rules
Yeah, you're right! It does take some time to get the hang of it, but once you understand the reasons behind it, it becomes less confusing and you'll pick it up faster. :)
Hey Grace, wonderful video. I've learned Chinese for a long time, but have never encountered material that explained 的 usage before. This is very helpful. Have you ever considered producing these videos entirely in Chinese? I always feel bad listening to English videos when trying to learn Chinese, because I feel some learning opportunity is lost.
i speak chinese since i'm a child with my parents but it sounds like i'm speaking like a child lol soo tysm for your videos ! it helps me a lot (i didn't know most of these rules !)
TY Grace! I didn’t realize just how tricky it can get haha. You explained it all really well though and you packed this video with so much useful info! I really like how you summarized everything in the end. That really helps for topics that have a lot to take in. The 的 is omitted for close personal relationships like friends/family, but what about for pets like 我的狗 vs 我狗? In daily speech, do pet owners usually omit 的 or include it?
Hi Josh! Thank you for the feedback 🥰 I've thought about the question you brought up. Usually, when talking about pets, we don't omit 的, so we say 我的狗 instead of 我狗. I guess it's because not everyone has a pet so it's not that common yet😅 However, most people have a family or a group they belong to. I hope this explanation makes sense to you!
I can noticed the between Malaysia slang and Mainland chinese.. 😅 I'm from malaysia, sometimes I got confuse the pronouciation because I learn Mainland CH.. 😅😅😅
In formal speech mandarin is the same in every country. But in casual speech Singaporeans have an accent where some of the consonants, a a few of the vowels, and very few of the tones are pronounced differently. This is not considered standard though, the sounds are heavily influenced by Hokkien, Malay, and English Furthermore there's even a clear difference between Malaysia and Singapore mandarin 😅
Yaaa i saw this 的 some days ago, and the teacher on yt said that in some cases, like saying 'our company' 'your company' and 'my' things it is ommited (this is the beginner, since i'm a beginner) And aaaa Congrats for 202K Subs Grace ^-, your channel is nice, soft and cute and you are very helpful
A good advice is the less you use "的", the more you sound like a native speaker. We Chinese do not "sometimes" leave out "的", we only sometimes use "的" when we have no way to avoid using it. I heard “的”is not a Chinese thing (at least it was not used as frequently as it is now), it is introduced into Chinese to imitate the structures of foreign languages to make Chinese sound more logical.
Thank you, this is very helpful! Do you have any videos about pairing colors with nouns? I've seen "color + de + noun" as well as "color + noun". And sometimes 色 is used and sometimes it isnt. I'm definitely confused!
I am not specializing in Chinese language, but as Taiwanese I don't use "de" too often. I only use "de" in the phrase to avoid some semantic problems, in my humble opinion.
As a native Chinese speaker, I feel like you create very captivating and interesting content even for native speakers! But one thing I wanna point out is that it's a little bit unnatural when you make 后鼻音, like 冰, 厅. I know you are trying to make them separate with characters with 前鼻音, yet the retroflex quality seems a bit excessive, more like retroflex in English. I figure there are major differences in retroflex nasals between Chinese and English.
Yes, there are some situations 的 is needed, for example: When you omit 的 and the intended meaning changes, then we can't omit 的: ”我上個月買的書 （我上个月买的书）The book that I bought last month" → "我上個月買書（我上个月买书） I bought books last month" When the description of nouns is complicated, we wouldn't omit 的, for example, with duplicated adjectives: "乾乾淨淨的房間（干干净净的房间）a spotless room". In this case, the description is very descriptive and complicated so it's unlikely to view them all as one unit (and use them as a noun) in a sentence. I hope this helps!
Thank you for taking time answering my question! I have been watching your channel for a month and your program is very educational. I like your methods of giving examples, showing Chinese writing in traditional and simplified ways… I appreciate your clarification and will continue watching
Grace ơi tớ có câu hỏi này mong được giải đáp nha. Gần đây tớ có xem phim, trong phim có câu : 还拍照. tớ tra 拍照 (pái zhào) nghĩa là chụp ảnh. Nhưng khi tớ google dịch vdu câu : tôi thích chụp ảnh thì google sẽ dịch sang tiếng Trung là 我喜欢摄影 (Wǒ xǐhuān shèyǐng). Vậy sự khác biệt ở đây là thế nào nhỉ? Còn rất nhiều trường hợp khác tớ thấy google dịch sử dụng từ khác so với câu mẫu.
I find it rather amusing and even ironic that many people are drawn to learning Chinese because they are told that Chinese “has no grammar”! I love the Chinese language and find its structural logic and grammar absolutely fascinating. But to say that it has no grammar or it has a simple and easy grammar can’t be further from the truth!
Of course any languages have rules for usages and structures, but when people talking about "Chinese has no grammar", they use grammar in a narrow sense which is "a dedicated grammatical structure to communicate a certain meaning". In this narrow sense, there are two ways to communicate a meaning, one is use a dedicated structure, the other one is use words, and the former is grammar, the latter is not. For example, you can say English has past tense, because it use a dedicated structure (adding ed to verbs to change it to past form)to communicate a certain meaning (it happened in the past) , but one can also say that in this narrow sense, English does not have the grammar future sense, because English do not use a dedicated structure, instead it use some words(e.g. adding the word"will" or "be going to" , just like in Chinese we use word "将" or "要" or a lot of other words) to communicat "future", and those sturcture or words have other usages and meanigs( Like "He is going to Beijing" "God had willed it" , just like"要"and"将" have other usages and meanings, and "了"has tons of usages other than communicating ”past“ and “past perfect” ), also we do not actually need those words to communicate "future" (e.g. A:"We have a party tomorrow, Do you want to come?" B:"I'm there!")，just like we do not necessarily need"将" , "的" “了”. Chinese aways use words instead of grammar to communicate a meaning, and all those words are not dedicated to one meaning, also we do not really have to use those words to communicate the meanings. That is why people say Chinese do not have grammar, in the sense that Chinese only use words and some confusing rules of arranging those words to communicate, but it does not have any advanced grammatical structure like word forms to clear things up. But that is a good thing for learners, because you really do not have to pay too much attention to grammar, you just have to learn words. You can and only can acquire all those confusing rules by reading and listening a lot, and talking to Chinese people. If you try to spend a lot of time to learn all those rules like you would do when learning grammar of other languages, you are doing it wrong.
I was watching Chinese with Xiaolu and saw your collab video but I noticed it was her last video dated 2 years ago. Do you know if she is doing well or if anything happened to her?
