--- title: Mandarin compared with English — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Mandarin compared with English», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most native speakers on Earth, and it works very differently from English, which makes it a bril --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Mandarin compared with English # Mandarin compared with English Lesson 34 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/0/) — Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most native speakers on Earth, and it works very differently from English, which makes it a brilliant puzzle. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/1/) — Mei says "mā, má, mǎ, mà" and her friend hears "ma, ma, ma, ma"; but to Mei they are four words, mother, hemp, horse and scold, because in Mandarin the rise and fall of your voice (the tone) is part of the word. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/2/) — Mandarin verbs never change for past or present, nouns usually don't change for plural, and questions often just add a little "ma" at the end; the work is done by small extra words and by the situation. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/3/) — It is written with thousands of characters instead of an alphabet, so learners use pinyin, Chinese sounds written in Latin letters with tone marks, to help them along. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/4/) — Mandarin is a tonal language: the same sounds with different pitch patterns make different words; it has four main tones and a neutral tone. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/5/) — "Mā" (high, flat) means mother, "má" (rising) means hemp, "mǎ" (dipping) means horse and "mà" (falling) means scold. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/6/) — Mandarin verbs don't change for past or present; time is shown with words like "yesterday" or small particles like "了" (le), so "我吃了" means "I ate". - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/7/) — Chinese writing uses thousands of characters, each usually a syllable with a meaning; about 2,000 to 3,000 are needed to read a newspaper. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/8/) — Pinyin writes Chinese sounds with Latin letters and tone marks; it helps learners with pronunciation. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/9/) — Mandarin puts a measure word between a number and a noun: "两本书" (liǎng běn shū), two books, uses "本" for books; English does something similar in "two pieces of paper" or "a loaf of bread". - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/10/) — Mandarin nouns usually don't change for plural: "三只猫" means three cats, and the number shows it; for people, "们" (men) can make a plural, as in "朋友们", friends. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/11/) — "Gung ho" came into English in the 1940s from a Chinese slogan, "gōnghé", understood as "work together"; in English it now means very, sometimes too, eager. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/12/) — Mandarin has many four-character idioms called chéngyǔ, like "人山人海", "people mountain people sea", meaning a huge crowd. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/13/) — Adding "吗" (ma) to the end of a sentence turns it into a yes/no question: "你好吗?" (nǐ hǎo ma?) means "How are you?", literally "you good?". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/14/) — Some say "long time no see" is a word-for-word copy of Chinese "好久不见"; others link it to a different source, and the origin is still argued about. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/34-mandarin-compared-with-english/15/) — Mandarin and Cantonese sound so different that speakers can't understand each other's speech, though they share much of the writing system. - ← previous: [Ukrainian compared with English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/33-ukrainian-compared-with-english/) - next →: [French compared with English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/35-french-compared-with-english/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)