When I first started Chinese, I was terrified of the grammar. Tones? Stressful. Characters? Gorgeous but overwhelming. Word order? I thought it would be a total nightmare.
Then… surprise — it’s actually one of the easiest parts.
Chinese works a lot like English at its core: Subject – Verb – Object.
小李 吃 苹果 – Xiao Li eats an apple
That means you can make real sentences pretty quickly. There are just a few little twists I wish I’d known from the start:
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Put the place before the verb: 我在大学学中文 (I at university study Chinese).
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Put the time before the place: 他昨天在大学踢球 (He yesterday at university played ball).
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No messy conjugations: Use small markers instead — 会 (will), 了 (done), 正在 (in the middle of).
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Add “how” with 得 (de): 狗跑得快 (The dog runs fast).
Once this clicked for me, building sentences felt like stacking blocks — just time, place, action, done. No endless verb charts, no overthinking.
If you want more examples (and some pronunciation help), here’s the blog I learned from:
Chinese Sentence Structure
Anyone else have that “ohhh” moment when a Chinese grammar point turned out to be way simpler than expected?