Growing up in China, I had a subject called 语文（yǔ wén）which you can say is Chinese, but more, is Chinese for Chinese. When I was learning English, the hard bit that I came across was the time tense: the time tense in English is something that I tend to ignore. If you have started learning Chinese already, you would know that in the Chinese language, we don’t conjugate the verb; thus, changing the tense can be so difficult for Chinese people. It is not something that is rooted in our language. I will give an example here:
In English, if I am to say “I went to the shop yesterday,” I conjugate the verb go, changing from go to went to signify something that happened in the past. In Chinese, I would say “我昨天去了商店” or “我昨天去商店了” （我=I, 昨天=yesterday, 去=go, 商店=shop, 了= can have various meaning depends on the position and situation). Here, the 去 remains 去. Some people would say, but here you have “去了”。 While here “了” can indicate occurrence or completion, it does not equal a past tense. Think about this, why can you also put 了 at the end of the sentence? As if, the character 了 is like a fairy dropped into different spots in the sentence that do not need to tie up with the verb. 了 has the essence of Chinese feeling when it occurs in a Chinese sentence.
This brings me to another topic that I found it is hard to describe: the concept of The Predicate (谓语wèi yǔ). Since there can be a whole range of different kinds of words, including adjectives, verbs and even nouns as the Predicate, it is hard to describe what is the Predicate. I learned to describe to my students, saying the Predicate is this thing that what you want your sentence to do, a bit like the what part in a sentence. Using 商店（shop）in a sentence such as “我去了商店" the entire “去了商店” section is the predicate. You dissect the sentence into two parts, the first part is the subject 我（I）, and the second part could be called the “so what” part, which here is “去了商店”。I think this part is particularly hard for English speakers. When I was learning English, I was always made to focus on the idea of Subject + Verb + Object. The verb is the part that is so crucial. But in Chinese, no!! You can have a sentence like 今天九月十三号， which literally translates as Today September 13. For English speakers, this is bizarre!
Finally I would like to share with you this Sentence Structure Song that I learned in 语文 class. I have always said to my students “You need to switch to a Chinese brain when you learn Chinese language!”
For all the emphasis on Subject+Verb+Object structure when I was learning English, I hope this 主谓宾Subject+Predicate+Object chant can be remembered when you are learning Chinese!
主zhǔ谓wèi宾bīn.
SubjectPredicateObject
定dìng状zhuàng补bǔ.
AttributeAdverbialComplement
主zhǔ干gàn枝zhī叶yè分fēn清qīng楚chǔ
Divide clearly what’s the main part and the branches
定dìng语yǔ必bì居jū主zhǔ宾bīn前qián
Attribute must be in front of the Subject and Object
谓wèi前qián为wéi状zhuàng谓wèi后hòu补bǔ
Adverbial is before Predicate, Complement is after Predicate
