Mandarin Chinese Grammar Basics Quiz

Answer: Reduplication suggests looking 'a little'

In cases where an action verb is repeated, for example in the sentence 'Qing ni kan kan zhei ben shu' (Please take a brief look at this book), the effect semantically is to suggest the actor perform the action 'a little bit'. Another form of this same grammar construct is to add the word 'yi' (one) between the reduplicated verb, as in 'Qing ni kan yi kan zhei ben shu.'

Answer: The new word becomes an adjective, with the 'ke' comparable to the English suffix '-able'

The morpheme 'ke' is a very useful one in Mandarin. It helps create adjectives out of common verbs, as does the suffix '-able' in English. Something that is laughable would be 'ke + xiao' (xiao = to laugh). 'Ke + ai' would mean 'lovable', 'ke + chi' would mean 'edible' and 'ke + kao' would mean 'dependable'. Now you create a compound using 'ke' and the word 'xin' (believe). What do you get?

Answer: Nan (Difficult)

So, using the same example as in the question, 'nan' + 'wen' would take on the meaning 'smelly'. Using the word 'kan' (look) again, we come up with 'hao + kan' (attractive) and 'nan + kan' (ugly). So the terms for pretty and ugly are the literal combinations 'good look' and 'difficult look', respectively.

Answer: -men

Hence, 'wo + men' would mean 'we' or 'us', and 'tongxue + men' would mean 'classmates'. Please note that the '-men' suffix only works for pronouns and polysyllabic human nouns. Monosyllabic human nouns such as 'bing' (soldier) cannot take the '-men' suffix.

Answer: Feizao (Soap)

While a seal is called a 'hai + gou' (sea + dog), a movie is a 'dian + ying' (electric + image) and an airplane is a 'fei + ji' (flying + machine), the compound for soap really makes no sense. 'Fei' means 'fat', while 'zao' is a word for 'black'.

Answer: Ge

While in English, if we want to pluralize a noun we simply add an '-s' to the end, in Chinese there is no such construct. Rather, for measurable nouns a measure word such as 'ge' is always employed. For example, if I want to see 'three people' I would say 'san ge ren' (san = three, ren = people). 'Ba', 'tiao' and 'tao' are also measure words, but each is used for specific nouns ('ba' is used typically for items with handles, 'tiao' for narrow things and 'tao' for things that come in sets.)

Answer: False

Quite the opposite, actually. Usually, the word 'le' is added at the end of a sentence, or after a verb, to indicate that an action or event has already begun to take place, or that an action has been completed. An example: 'Wo xie le zhe ge wenti' (I have written this question.)

Answer: True

Chinese grammar is fairly flexible at times, but one hard and fast rule is that all adverbial phrases must come at the beginning of a sentence. This also applies to prepositional phrases as well!

Answer: Bi

For example, if I wanted to express that you are smarter than me, I would say, 'Ni bi wo congming' (ni = you, congming = intelligent.) If I wanted to point out that my wife was more beautiful than any other woman, I would say 'Wo taitai bi bie de nuren piaoliang' (taitai = wife, bie = other, nuren = women, piaoliang = beautiful.)

Answer: All of these

Indeed, 'ta' may signify all of these pronouns...a very useful word indeed. Beware, however, that though the word is pronounced identically, there are a number of written forms, each signifying a different meaning of this third person (and thing) pronoun (I believe there are five different written forms, at least!)