Chinese Sentence Structure // Is it that difficult?

Mandarin 普通话
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Even though Chinese is considered one of the hardest languages, one aspect that is a relief for English speakers is the Chinese sentence structure, which at its base follows English very similarly!

To make things clear, Chinese is an SVO language.

That is:

Subject Verb Object.

This is similar to English and most European languages.

To give an exemple, in English we would say: Adam eats an apple.

In Chinese you would say: 小李 吃 苹果 (xiǎo lǐ chī píngguǒ).

Subject (Xiao Li) + Verb (Eat) + Object (Apple)

As simple as that !

Another example: Bella rides a bike

小红 骑 自行车 (xiǎohóng qí zìxíngchē)

Lit: XiaoHong (小红) Rides (骑) Bike (自行车)

Of course complex sentences will look different, but the most basic Chinese sentence structure is actually quite easy to start, don’t you think?

Chinese basic sentence SVO
Chinese basic sentence SVO1080×1080 189 KB

BONUS // Check out LTL’s free grammar lesson on Chinese sentence structure here:

1 Like
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The similar sentence structure to English definitely helped me construct sentences pretty easily - then the main challenge was then actually being able to pronounce the sentence correctly :laughing:

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This is something I like about Mandarin that it is familir to my basics which helps me to think in English and convert that into Mandarin

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The fact that the basic sentence structure in Chinese is so similar to the Italian one (my native language) definitely helped not losing faith when I first started learning Mandarin!

Even tho there’re some asptects of the Chinese grammar that are still a mystery to me (like how to use 把 properly), knowing that the structure is so simple it’s definitely comforting!

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把 and 被 are a struggle!!