Chinese language patterns no one told you about

When I was about 3-4 years into studying Chinese, my vocabulary was ok and I could already have some conversations, but I still noticed noticed that when natives spoke and said a phrase that I understood, they phrased it in a way that sounded so much better.

I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but I just knew that there was something they knew about, that I didn’t.

This was not an issue of vocabulary or even tones, but more about the specific language patterns they were using.

Now in hindsight as a fluent speaker of Mandarin, I realised becoming aware of these patterns took me years, but I’m going to share them with you today to help you develop a better intuition for Mandarin.

1. 帮 bāng

We all know this word, “to help”, easy right?

When you say to someone in English, “Let me help you with that”, the scenario you’re imagining is that both of you do the work together.

You write the essay together, you do the laundry together, etc…

But in Chinese, the minute you say 帮 it becomes a solo operation!

I learnt this the hard way when I told my Chinese friend I’d help her lead her English class.

When I turned up to her class, I expected her to be there too, but she didn’t even turn up! I ended up doing it alone.

When I approached her afterwards, she said “I didn’t come because I thought you offered to take the class for me?”

So, REMEMBER!

我帮你买咖啡 = only you are paying for the coffee

我帮你写论文 = only you are writing the essay

我帮你做 = only you are doing the task

2. 给你吃/给你喝

Similar to the pattern above, this is talking about doing favours for others.

When we make food or drinks for people in English, we have a fairly straightforward structure.

”I’ll make coffee for you”, “I'll make toast for you” “I’ll cook for you”

It finishes on “for you”

In Chinese they always have to indicate what you’re going to do with it.

我做饭给你吃 lit: I’ll cook food for you to eat

我煮咖啡给你喝 lit: I’ll make coffee for you to drink

It seems funny and redundant to add that bit at the end.

Of course they’re going to eat or drink whatever you make them. What else were they going to do with it?

But this is a Classical Chinese pattern, where you indicate clearly the result of your actions. You can observe it in other language structures like:

“吃外卖，吃死了“ LIT: eat takeaway, eat to death.
(Repetition of action and indication of end result)

This is just a colloquial jokey way of saying someone only eats takeaway food and will die as a result.

There are tons more of these types of discreet patterns within Chinese that people don’t pick up on until much later in their Mandarin journey. BUT, we’re here to share all the good stuff with you no matter your level ;)

If you like picking up on patterns like this, we do exactly this in our 1-to-1 Mandarin sessions 😏 We base every class on native Chinese media curated for your exact level. That way you only learn vocab, structures and cultural references that are 100% relevant to you.

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