Learn how to use Chinese adjectives
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| 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 use a verb in the negative form. In this lesson, we will start to learn about Chinese adjectives and how to use them properly. |
| You will see that for adjectives, things in Chinese are just as easy as in English. |
| Let’s start with a concrete example: Zhè shì yī ge yǒuqù de yóuxì. |
| "It is a funny game." |
| [slowly] Zhè shì yī ge yǒuqù de yóuxì. |
| Have you noticed something? Yes,this sentence has the same structure in Chinese and English. Zhè means “it” here, shì is “is”, yī ge means “a”, yǒuqù de is an adjective which means “funny”, and yóuxì is “game”. |
| All together again, Zhè shì yī ge yǒuqù de yóuxì. |
| So now, let’s see another sentence to see if it really works or not. |
| How do we say "This is a red apple" in Chinese? |
| Let's see word by word. “This” is Zhè, “is” is shì, “an” is yī ge ”red” is hóngsè de, and “apple” is píngguǒ. |
| So the whole sentence would be Zhè shì yī ge hóngsè de píngguǒ. |
| [slowly] Zhè shì yī ge hóngsè de píngguǒ. |
| Here in the sentence above, can you tell which word is the adjective? Yes,that’s hóngsè de. I’m sure you must have noticed there is a word de at the end of each adjective in the two sentences above. What role do you think this little word plays here? Actually that’s one characteristic of Chinese adjective. When adjectives are used as attributives to modify nouns, de is usually necessary and added between adjectives and nouns to show the modifying relation. |
| Here, let’s see a few more useful adjectives for you to remember. These may help if you go traveling in China someday: |
| hǎochī de “delicious” |
| hǎo de “good” |
| guì de “expensive” |
| piányi de “cheap” |
| yuǎn de “far” |
| jìn de “near” |
| Now it’s time for Yanru’s Tips. |
| When the adjective is at the end of a sentence, for example, “this apple is delicious”, de is always omitted. So this sentence is Zhège píngguǒ hǎochī . |
| [slowly] Zhège píngguǒ hǎochī . |
| In this lesson, we learned how to properly use adjectives in Chinese. Next time we’ll learn the basic uses of verb qù, which is "To go," so that you will be able to say sentences like "I’m going to school." |
| Ok everyone, I’ll be waiting for you in the next Sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ. |
| Zài jiàn ! |
12 Comments
HideCan you make a sentence using an adjective?
你好 robert groulx,
谢谢 for posting and studying with us. If you have any questions, please let us know.😄
Kind regards,
雷文特 (Levente)
Team ChineseClass101.com
thank you for ghe lesson transcript
favorite phrase is : Zhè shì yī ge yǒuqù de yóuxì.
robert
Hello Andrea,
Thank you for your comment. You're right, it'd be wrong if we add "是 to be" with the adjective at the end of a sentence. We often use 很 to link nouns to adjectives. You may check out this lesson for more details.
https://www.chineseclass101.com/lesson/beginner-2-how-are-you/
Hope it helps, let us know if you have any questions.
Ngai Lam
Team ChineseClass101.com
Hello! Why do we not use the verb "to be" in the example sentence with the adjective at the end? 😅 Would it be wrong to add shì?
Hello Ben,
对，中国真的很大 。😄
Thank you for learning with us, let us know if you have any questions.
Ngai Lam
Team ChineseClass101.com
中国很大。
Hi, wissal alaoui,
90 point!
Just one mistake, 这是 is used for something, so here, should use "她(tā)".
她是一个美丽的老师。She is a beautiful teacher.
Also, we can use 位（wèi）for a teacher(the great people).
So, the sentence can also be 她是一位美丽的老师。
Cho
Team ChineseClass101.com
u
这是一个美丽的老师
hahaha i am talking about :grin: :heart:
Hi, Simon,
You sentence is correct. Don't worry.:wink:
Or we can say as following because we usually put the main part(这个视频) at the head of the sentence.
这个视频做得很好。
This video is well composed.
Cho
Team ChineseClass101.com