Ch 2 · Lesson 2Mandarin · Chapter 2 · Lesson 2 · Grammar primer
Question words
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
Question words stay where the answer would go
？Nǐ qù nǎr?
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No fronting, no inversion, no do-support. Replace the unknown with (shénme), (shéi), (nǎr) or (wèishénme) in its natural slot and leave everything else alone, so (nǐ qù nǎr) is literally you-go-where. And never bolt (ma) onto a wh-question; it is already a question.
？Nǐ de xīn gōngzuò zěnmeyàng?
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(zěnme) goes before a verb and asks how it is done: (nǐ zěnme qù), how are you getting there? (zěnmeyàng) ends the sentence and asks what something is like: (tiānqì zěnmeyàng), what's the weather like? With no 'how' in sight, (zěnme) means 'how come', with surprise: (nǐ zěnme méi lái)?
How old is
？Nǐ děng le duōjiǔ?
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(duō) plus an adjective asks how much of it: (duō dà), how old or how big; (duō yuǎn), how far; (duōjiǔ), how long. Ask a child (jǐ suì) instead. How long goes after the verb, where the answer's time will sit: (nǐ děng le duōjiǔ)? (wǒ děng le shí fēnzhōng).
A or B? is
？Nǐ hē chá háishi kāfēi?
Why?Hide
To ask someone to pick, put (háishi) between the choices: (nǐ hē chá háishi kāfēi), tea or coffee? It is a complete question, like (nǐ qù bu qù), so neither takes (ma). (huòzhě) is the 'or' of statements: (chá huòzhě kāfēi dōu kěyǐ), tea or coffee, either is fine.
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.
Read the full article · 6 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 18 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 2 of 19 in this chapter