Mandarin Learning Basic

One of the grammar using in Mandarin is Particles. Like in the English to performs the changing form of the verb, it’s usually using adverbs. Particles typically occur in the neutral tone. In this article, we will study three different kinds of particles: structural, interrogative, and aspectual.

Indicate Possesion
In English Structure, we can add the possessive pronouns like his, her, my, their etc or use the ‘apostrophe s’ (‘s), in Chinese structure, one of the particles used most is 的 (de). It is have the same function in English to indicate the possession.

我的朋友 pronounced ‘wo(3) de peng(2) you(3)’ means ‘My Friend’
他的朋友 pronounced ‘ta(1) de peng(2) you(3)’ means ‘His/Her Friend’
他是我的朋友 pronounced ‘ta(1) shi(4) wo(3) de peng(2) you(3)’ means ‘He/She is my friend’

Create Questions
Adding the interrogative particle 吗 (ma) to the end of statement will make the sentence into a question.