Chinese: Easy to Learn, But a Good Foundation is Needed

Chinese grammar is deceptively easy: no plurals and no complicated conjugations (not even past, present or future). Instead, Chinese uses a rather subtle system of particles and function words that has no equivalent in European languages. If you want to learn Chinese well, you need to focus on the basics from the very start. Below is a concentrated dose of basics.

The caption reads: 老闆！再來一罐！Lǎobǎn! Zài lái yíguàn! / Laobaan! Tzay lai yiguann! “Hey, boss! Let’s have another can!” (typical Taiwan usage)
[Source] Tsingtao Beer - Post Mao Cafe AUD6, CC--BY-SA Alpha

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Very important: Chinese is a high context language: if something can be understood without being explicitly mentioned, it is usually not said at all.

“Have you washed your hands?” becomes 手洗了沒有 Shǒu xǐle méiyǒu / Shoou Shii.le mei.yeou [literally] “Hand wash {complete} not”.

(1) You obviously have more than one hand so I don't need a plural (with pronouns and certain rare cases, Chinese can show explicit plurals), and of course I am asking whether you have washed your own hands [only a very small child would need to have his hands washed by an adult].

(2) The present perfect (have + past participle) form “have … -ed” is shown by using the perfective particle 了 le (inexperienced Chinese teachers sometimes introduce 了 as being “past tense in Chinese”, but this is very misleading).

(3) Yes-no questions can be formed by appending 沒有 méiyǒu / mei.yeou “not” to the end of a statement.

(4) Chinese frequently uses Topic-Comment Chains, where the first element in a “sentence” refers to something you want to talk about (手 *shǒu / shoou “hands”), followed by whatever you want to say about the topic at hand 洗了沒有 xǐle méiyǒu / shii.le mei.yeou “wash, complete, not”.

The speaker can add links to the comment part of the chain for several more phrases without ever mentioning the topic again. A mother might scold her child by continuing the topic chain:
還很髒！再洗一次了！Hái hěn zāng! Zài xǐ yīcì le! / Hair heen tzang! Tzay shii yitsyh .le”
[Literally] “[They are] still dirty! [Go] wash [them] again change”

Thus, another way to render 手洗了沒有 Shǒu xǐle méiyǒu / Shoou Shii.le mei.yeou:
“[As to your] hands, have [you ] washed [them or] not?” All of the elements in square brackets will be understood by any native speaker of Chinese. Foreign learners who add words such as “you”, “your” or “them” will sound rather odd, but will still be understood.

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Remember: no matter how bad your Chinese is, you will often receive sincere praise for making an effort to learn Chinese. This is intended to encourage you (unlike Europeans, Chinese rarely use sarcasm or irony) .

This very small example shows why forming sentences by dumping a bunch of words together produces less than optimal results.

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Let's use the example of “Waiter! Could you please bring me a beer?” In natural Chinese, you could say:

服務員，一瓶啤酒 Fúwùyuán, yìpíng píjiǔ / Fwuwuhyuan, yihpyng pyijeou [literally] “Waiter, one bottle beer”

(1) The first thing to notice that 一二三四五 yī, èr, sān, sì, wǔ / i ell san syh wuu** “one, two, three, four, five” and the like is OK only when saying numbers in isolation or when reciting the multiplication table. When numbers in Chinese are used to actually count things, such as beer, Chinese always adds a classifier (sometimes called a measure word). Note: this is not the same as a container!

Thus, “a beer” would never be called一啤酒 yī píjiǔ / i pyijeou. Instead, you need to say
一瓶啤酒 yìpíng píjiǔ / yihpyng pyijeou “a bottle of beer”
or 一杯啤酒 yìbēi píjiǔ / yihbei pyijeou “a glass of beer”

(2) If you want more, just say 服務員，再來一瓶 Fúwùyuán, zài lái yìpíng / Fwuwuhyuan, tzay lai yihpyng “Another bottle of beer please” [literally] “Waiter again come one bottle”. Here, 來 lái / lai “come” could be rendered as “cause to come”

(3) In isolation, 一 yī / i “one” is a first tone syllable, but when used with other words, the tone changes (technical jargon: tone sandhi): 4th tone before 2nd tone syllables, and 2nd tone before 1st , 3rd and 4th tone syllables.

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Note: this post uses two systems of romanization
(1) 漢語拼音 Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (PY), the 1958 government standard, designed for the convenience of native speakers, which spells out most vowels and consonants using unintuitive letter choices and shows tones using optional diacritics (easily overlooked and quite confusing for foreign learners).

(2) 國語羅馬字 Gwoyeu Luomaatzyh (GR, usually spelled Gwoyeu Romatzyh), the slightly more complicated 1928 government standard that is based on Chinese phonology (many native-speaker teachers are unaware of this) rather than Chinese phonetics (individual sounds). The tones are shown via built-in mnemonic spellings, so this system helps foreign beginners reliably remember Chinese tones (they can learn Hanyu Pinyin after they have mastered Chinese phonology).

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If you want to know more about me, here is my intro post:
Enthusiastic INTP Polyglot 文通四海