If you’re not a complete beginner at Chinese, you can probably express a certain limited (maybe very limited) amount of ideas when you speak. Perhaps you know a few sentence structures and a few bits of grammar, which you can plug your vocabulary into and start making yourself understood! Great, because that is how most people start out. Build up the grammar rules, build up the sentence structures and build up your vocabulary and your ability to express yourself will grow exponentially.
This works as long as you are in control, as long as you get to pick the sentence, and as long as you can build it up from the components you know. But sometimes that is not possible – for example if someone asks you an unexpected question. You understand the question, and know – in your mother tongue – what the answer should be. But you don’t know how to put that answer into Chinese. Fear not, there is a really simple trick to turn most questions in Chinese into a grammatically valid answer.
This trick is one of the most useful things I ever learned, and will probably never stop coming in handy. You just need to identify the “question word” in the sentence, and replace that with the answer! Questions words are things like who, what, where, when, how much etc. So for example:
他的女朋友是谁?
[tā de nǚ péng you shì shéi]
[his girlfriend is who]
他的女朋友是小红
[tā de nǚ péng you shì xiǎo hóng]
[his girlfriend is Xiao Hong]
This sentence means “who is his girlfriend?”, or word for word, “his girlfriend is who?”. Obviously the question word is “who” [谁|shéi], and we replace the question word with the answer, the name of his girlfriend, 小红! Simple.
As with everything, there are exceptions. If I ask “who is your girlfriend, you cannot reply “your girlfriend is Helen”. If you want to answer the question, you need to reply “my girlfriend is Helen”. So when using this rule, always replace 你 with 我. Finally, there is one obvious exception to this rule, but it doesn’t matter much as you probably already know it.
你多大?
我二是五岁
That’s right, if the question is how old are you, “你多大”, then the question word is 多, and the answer should replace 大 with 岁. That is pretty much it. Let’s see some more examples, the question words and their replacement answers are in bold.
你想去哪儿?
[nǐ xiǎng qù nǎr?]
我想去北京
[wǒ xiǎng qù běijīng]
你什么时候想去?
[nǐ shénme shíhou xiǎng qù]
我后天想去。
[wǒ hòutiān xiǎng qù]
你想买几张火车票?
[nǐ xiǎng mǎi jǐ zhāng huǒchē piào]
我想买三张火车票
[wǒ xiǎng mǎi sānzhāng huǒchē piào]
三张票要多少钱？
[sān zhāng piào yào duōshao qián]
三张票要九百块钱
[sān zhāng piào yào jiǔ bǎi kuài qián]
Seems simple right? Next time someone asks you a question in Chinese, see if you can use this trick to answer it.
Willow Tree Chinese 