The languages of China - Grammar

There is little difference in grammar between the various forms of Chinese. There are differences in vocabulary and pronunciation is the most differential of all.

There is a big similarity of word order between Chinese and English. In English the major word order is subject + verb + object and in Chinese that is the same case. For instance, in English a boy may say “I love you” to his girl friend. In Chinese, the word order is exactly the same: “我（I） 爱（love）你(you).”
Chinese is language that has no inflection to indicate person, number, gender, case, tense, voice and so on. The verb dose not indicates the tense or the voice. Where people want to express ideas that contain tense, they use adverbials. If, for example, one wants to express the idea of a perfect tense, one uses the particle le (了), a sign of the perfect tense of the verb. In passive voice, bei(被) is often used for the English “by”.

There is no inversion in a question in Chinese as in English. Many English learners of Chinese have difficulty learning and using English articles might reduce the difficulty of learning Chinese for the foreigner, but there are other things that may offset the convenience. What may be the most difficult for foreigners to master is sisheng (四声)，the four tones.

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