Mandarin · Chapter 14 · Lesson 4 · Grammar primer

Weile purpose clauses

Grammar for HSK 3.

The short version

为了 (wèile) puts the goal before the action

English usually states the action first and tacks the purpose on at the end; Mandarin leads with the goal. 为了健康 (wèi le jiàn kāng),他每天运动 (tā měi tiān yùn dòng) reads literally as 'for the sake of health, he exercises every day' - train yourself to produce that order even though it feels backwards.

为了通过考试,我复习了很多。 Wèile tōngguò kǎoshì, wǒ fùxíle hěn duō.

In order to pass the exam, I revised a lot.

The 了 (le) inside 为了 (wèi le) never marks a tense

为了 (wèi le) already contains 了 (le), but it is a fixed part of the word, not the aspect particle that marks completion. It stays exactly as written whether the sentence is about the past, present or future - any completion marker the action itself needs attaches to the main verb instead.

为了健康,他去年开始运动。 Wèile jiànkāng, tā qùnián kāishǐ yùndòng.

For the sake of his health, he started exercising last year.

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 read

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

Lesson 4 of 14 in this chapter

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