Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Hēi , dàjiā hǎo , wǒ jiào Mǎ Yànrú. Hi everybody! I’m YanruMa.
Welcome to ChineseClass101.com’s “Sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Chinese.
In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about age. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to use the verb yǒu, “to have.” to talk about things you own.
Nǐ yǒu qìchē ma? “Do you have a car?”
[slowly] Nǐ yǒu qìchē ma?
Let’s take a closer look at this question.
Nǐ means “You”
yǒu means “have”
Qìchē means “car”
and ma is a word that makes the whole sentence a question.
So if you *do* have a car, how can you answer this question?
Chinese verbs don’t change depending on person, so it’s really simple!
Just take the question sentence ‘Nǐ yǒu qìchē ma ?’
and change ‘Nǐ to Wǒ
Then remove the word ma from the end.
So all together, you get
Wǒ yǒu qìchē. “I have a car.”
[slowly] Wǒ yǒu qìchē .
Say that a classmate wants to borrow a pen from you. He might ask, Nǐ yǒu bǐ ma? Which is “Do you have a pen?”
Actually, there is an EVEN simpler way to answer the question. You don’t have to repeat the thing your friend asked about, so if they say to you, Nǐ yǒu bǐ ma?...
...You can just answer with Wǒ yǒu.
[slowly] Wǒ yǒu.
Now, in Chinese, there is another very common pattern for asking questions using the verb yǒu. Instead of ending the sentence with ma, we will say yǒu two times, with a méi in the middle. Let me demonstrate.
Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu qìchē ?
“Do you have a car or not?”
[slowly] Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu qìchē ?
This is literally like saying, “You have don’t have a car?
Now it’s time for Yanru’s tips.
Although Nǐ yǒu qìchē ma? and Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu qìchē ? mean the same, the former is a little more formal than the latter. When you say Nǐ yǒu méiyǒu qìchē ?, you should be be careful about your tone, or you might sound rude.
In this lesson, we have learned about the verb yǒu, “to have”. In previous lessons, we also used the verb “shì”, or “to be”
In the next lesson, we’ll learn how to use these two verbs in their negative forms in order to say “I’m not” and “I don’t have”.
Unlike in English, the word you have to add is different, depending on whether you say, “you” or “shi”. Do you know how?
I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ lesson.
Zài jiàn !

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