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tā He 打 dǎ hit 人。 rén person 他 打 人。 tā dǎ rén He hit person He hits someone. Chinese can also be considered a topic-prominent language: there is a strong preference for sentences that begin with the topic, usually "given" or "old" information; and end with the comment, or "new" information. Certain modifications of the basic subject–verb–object order are permissible and ...
individual things, people — generic measure word (usage of this classifier in conjunction with any noun is generally accepted if the person does not know the proper classifier) 根: gēn gan1: gan1 kun thin, slender, pole, stick objects (needles 針 / 针, pillars 支柱, telegraph poles, matchsticks, etc.); strands 絲 / 丝 (e.g. hair ...
When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
In Chinese, a numeral cannot usually quantify a noun by itself; instead, the language relies on classifiers, commonly also referred to as measure words. [note 2] When a noun is preceded by a number, a demonstrative such as this or that, or certain quantifiers such as every, a classifier must normally be inserted before the noun. [1]
A coverb is a word or prefix that resembles a verb or co-operates with a verb. In languages that have the serial verb construction, coverbs are a type of word that shares features of verbs and prepositions. A coverb takes an object or complement and forms a phrase that appears in sequence with another verb phrase in accordance with the serial ...
A verb may acquire a specific meaning when used with a certain object, in which case the pair functions as a compound word made of a verb and an object that would be translated into one verb in English. For example: 讀書 (reading = read books), 唱歌 (singing = sing songs), 結果 (results = bear fruit).
Additionally, some words may sound unnatural without rhotacization, as is the case with 花 or 花儿 (huā or huār 'flower'). [11] In these cases, the erhua serves to label the word as a noun (and sometimes a specific noun among a group of homophones). Since in modern Mandarin many single-syllable words (in which there are both nouns and ...
Words of Chinese origin have entered European languages, including English. Most of these were direct loanwords from various varieties of Chinese.However, Chinese words have also entered indirectly via other languages, particularly Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, that have all used Chinese characters at some point and contain a large number of Chinese loanwords.