There are numerous uses of 了 in Mandarin Chinese. And they’re often hard to interpret, let alone use! In this article, I will focus on five uses of 了 to express some sort of emphasis, which are not related to the past tense that 了 is commonly associated with.
These uses of 了 can catch beginners off guard: “Why the heck is there a 了 there?“ “Do I really need a 了 here?”. I will analyze the instances where 了 is used in expressions for emphasis and hopefully you can also observe the common theme.
The Chinese expression 不好意思 can be very useful but difficult to understand. In this article, I will cover both basic usages as well as advanced interpretations. Of course, we will start with Peppa Pig examples!
If you’ve watched S01E03 of Peppa Pig, the very first episode I wrote about, you probably noticed 玩 is often pronounced as wan-er. Why is there an “er” sound at the end of the word? When do you add the 儿 or er in Chinese words and when do you not? Are there any rules for adding er-coloring?
It’s actually not straight forward to explain how to say No in Chinese! Spoiler: It is not “不”.
Do you want to feel accomplished while you’re learning Mandarin Chinese? Learn to count in Mandarin! Counting in Mandarin is really easy, compared to many other languages!
为什么 (Wèishéme) means why and it’s a phrase you’ll come across constantly.
In the Peppa Pig episodes I’ve covered so far, 为什么 has showed up three times. In this post I want to explain a few different usages of 为什么 within contexts. It could get pretty tricky.
I also want to show you in a simple example why contexts and intonations are crucial for understanding the spoken Chinese language.
起来 or Qǐlái in Chinese can be interpreted and used in many ways. Sometimes it’s really hard to explain what 起来 means exactly, even for a native speaker (perhaps especially for a native speaker like me, because most of the time I don’t think about what it means at all!). You would have to interpret 起来 in a sentence or a context.
In this post I will talk about the most basic meaning of 起来, and go over a few instances of 起来 that have popped up in Peppa Pig so far.
想 = Xiǎng, 要 = Yào and 想要 = XiǎngYào can all be translated into “want” or “want to” sometimes. However, they’re not exactly the same across all contexts. (Otherwise, why would there be three terms instead of one?!) You may be wondering: What are the differences? When can they be used interchangeably or not? Which one should I use and when?
Have you come across repeating verbs in Chinese, such as 看看 and 听听, or 看了看 and 听了听, and wondered how they are different from regular verbs in Chinese? This post discusses how you could interpret and use repeating verbs in Chinese!
If you know anything about the Chinese language, you probably learned one is 一, two is 二, three is 三. (Surely you can extrapolate from here!) Have you heard of 两 (liǎng) which also means two?