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.

你是老师 pronounced ‘ni(3) shi(4) lao(3) shi(1)’ means ‘You are teacher’
你是老师吗? pronounced ‘ni(3) she(4) lao(3) shi(1) ma?’ means ‘Are you teacher’

Indicate Verbal Aspect
Now we talk about the aspectual particles. A couple good examples to compare the 了 (le) and 过 (guo), they both to indicate something happened in past. Let’s see the different of this two word. I will use the two kind of questions to explain it

Question: What did you do this morning?
Answer: I went to school

Question: Have you gone to school?
Answer: I have been go to school

You can see that’s the first answer is past tense and the second is present perfect tense. How about in Chinese Mandarin?

The first answer in mandarin is 我去了学� � – ‘wo(3) qu(4) le xue(2) xiao(4)’
The second is 我去过学� � – ‘wo(3) qu(4) guo(4) xue(2) xiao(4)’

Now you can see the different, right?