Kilo Lingo

Mandarin · Chapter 3 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer

Possession you

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

The A-not-A of 有没有 (yǒu méi yǒu), never 有不有 (yǒu bu yǒu)

有 (yǒu) accepts only one negator, so the verb-not-verb question has to be built on 没 (méi): 你有没有时间 (nǐ yǒu méi yǒu shí jiān). If you catch yourself about to write 有不有 (yǒu bu yǒu), the 没有 (méi yǒu) rule has slipped somewhere upstream. It is a useful self-check on a rule with no exceptions at all.

你有没有时间? Nǐ yǒu méi yǒu shí jiān?

Do you have time (or not)?

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 · 2 min read

Practice

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22-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.

Lesson 14 of 14 in this chapter

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