Ch 2 · Lesson 9

Ye and dou

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

(yě) goes before the verb, never at the end

。Wǒ yě xiǎng qù Zhōngguó.

I want to go to China too.
Why?

English puts 'too' at the end of the sentence, so learners write (wǒ xǐhuan kāfēi yě). It is wrong: (yě) is an adverb, and Mandarin adverbs sit after the subject and straight before the verb. If there is a (xiǎng) or (yào), (yě) goes in front of that.

(dōu) sums up what is on its left

。Wǒmen yě dōu xǐhuan kāfēi.

We all like coffee too.
Why?

(dōu, all, both) sits before the verb and gathers up the group named before it: (wǒmen dōu qù), we are all going. Read (dōu) and (bù) left to right: (wǒmen dōu bú shì lǎoshī) means none of us is a teacher, (wǒmen bù dōu shì lǎoshī) means not all of us are.

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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Practice

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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 28 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 9 of 19 in this chapter

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