Ch 6 · Lesson 18Mandarin · Chapter 6 · Lesson 18 · Grammar primer
Co verbs
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
The prepositional phrase goes before the verb
。Wǒ zài jiā chī fàn.
Why?Hide
Mandarin's co-verbs ( (cóng), (dào), (zài), (yòng), (zuò), (gěi)) carry their own object in front of the main verb, the reverse of English. 'I eat at home' comes out as I-at-home-eat. The negator usually goes before the co-verb: (wǒ bú zài jiā chī fàn), I don't eat at home. (wǒ zài jiā bù chī ròu) is right too, but means at home, I don't eat meat.
。Wǒ jiā lí xuéxiào hěn jìn.
Why?Hide
(cóng) marks where a movement starts: (wǒ cóng Běijīng lái), I come from Beijing. (lí) says how far apart two places are, and nobody moves: (wǒ jiā lí xuéxiào hěn jìn), my home is close to the school.
By train is
。Wǒ zuò huǒchē qù.
Why?Hide
The vehicle goes with (zuò), sit, before the main verb: (wǒ zuò huǒchē qù), I'm going by train. The tool goes with (yòng): (tā yòng Zhōngwén xiě xìn), he writes in Chinese. The person goes with (gěi): (wǒ gěi nǐ dǎ diànhuà), I'll ring you.
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 · 5 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 20 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 18 of 21 in this chapter