Mandarin · Chapter 9 · Lesson 7 · Grammar primer
Potential complements
Grammar for HSK 3.
The short version
Negatives first: 听不懂 (tīng bù dǒng) is real speech
Split a resultative with 得 (de) or 不 (bù) and you get possibility: 吃得完 (chī de wán) against 吃不完 (chī bù wán), 听得懂 (tīng de dǒng) against 听不懂 (tīng bù dǒng). In real conversation the 不 (bù) half dominates, because people are forever saying they can't finish, can't hear, can't afford. Drill those until they are automatic.
你说得太快，我听不懂。 Nǐ shuō de tài kuài, wǒ tīng bu dǒng.
听不懂 (tīng bù dǒng) is 'can't', 没听懂 (méi tīng dǒng) 'didn't'
Two different failures. 没听懂 (méi tīng dǒng) says that on this occasion the understanding did not happen; 听不懂 (tīng bù dǒng) says it cannot happen at all. The potential complement negates by swapping 得 (de) for 不 (bù), never with 没 (méi), and it will not stack with 能 (néng): pick 我听得懂 (wǒ tīng de dǒng) or 我能听懂 (wǒ néng tīng dǒng).
听不懂 tīng bu dǒng
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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Lesson 7 of 9 in this chapter