Ch 5 · Lesson 18

Dajia and ziji

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

(dàjiā) never takes a plural marker

。Dàjiā dōu zhīdào zhè jiàn shì.

Everyone knows about this.
Why?

(dà jiā) already means 'everyone' as a whole group, so (dà jiā men) is not standard Mandarin. It behaves like a subject pronoun and goes straight in front of the verb, very often paired with (dōu): (dà jiā dōu hěn gāo xìng), everyone is happy.

(zìjǐ) never changes for person

。Nǐ yào xiāngxìn zìjǐ.

You have to believe in yourself.
Why?

English needs a different word for myself, yourself and himself; Mandarin needs exactly one. The same (zì jǐ) follows (wǒ), (nǐ), (tā) or anyone else - there is no separate form to learn for each person.

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 · 4 min read

Practice

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

Lesson 18 of 21 in this chapter

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