Ch 1 · Lesson 5Mandarin · Chapter 1 · Lesson 5 · Grammar primer
Word order
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
Time and place of the action go before the verb
wǒ míngtiān qù Běijīng
Why?Hide
The biggest word-order difference from English. When something happens goes before the verb, and so does where it happens, with (zài): (wǒ míngtiān zài jiā gōngzuò), I-tomorrow-at-home-work. A destination is different: after (qù) or (lái) the place is just the object, so 'I am going to Beijing tomorrow' is I-tomorrow-go-Beijing. Putting the time word last, as English does, is always wrong.
Mandarin questions keep the order of a statement
？。Nǐ qù nǎlǐ? Wǒ qù Běijīng.
Why?Hide
English moves 'what' to the front and adds 'do'. Mandarin does neither: the question word sits exactly where the answer will go. (nǐ chī shénme?) is literally 'you eat what?', and the answer (wǒ chī fàn) fills the same slot. A yes/no question just adds (ma) to the end of the statement.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 21 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 5 of 18 in this chapter