Chinese Grammar Lesson _ Chinese word order practice _ Yoyo Chinese.

nǐ hǎo, welcome back to YoYo Chinese Grammar. In our last lesson, we learned the Chinese Golden Rule, which tells us how to arrange different elements in a complicated Chinese sentence. Basically, the word order should go like this. Subject, when the action takes place, where the action takes place, how the action takes place, and then the action. Now let's do a few exercises. First, please rearrange the word order of this sentence. I go to Los Angeles by train every month. Feel free to pause the video to figure this out. Alright, let's dissect this sentence. Here, I is the subject. Go to Los Angeles is the action, which is the core of the sentence, remember? We Chinese are not straightforward. We always beat around the bush first, and then cut to the chase. We always put the core, the action, at the end of the sentence. And other decorative elements such as by train, which is how I go to Los Angeles, and every month, which is when I go to Los Angeles, before the action. So according to the previous rule, subject, when, where, how, and then the action, the correct Chinese sequence should be, I, every month, by train, go to Los Angeles. Please note here that we don't have an element of where in this sentence. Now you're probably saying, come on yangyang, who says there's no element of where? Los Angeles is a place, a location. Los Angeles is the element of where. Well, to answer this question, I have to repeat what I just said. When refers to when the action takes place, and where refers to where the action takes place. Here, Los Angeles is not where the action, to go, takes place. Los Angeles is the destination of the action, to go, so this previous rule doesn't apply here. Alright, going to Los Angeles should be seen as an action as a whole. Now let's take a look at another sentence. I studied Chinese for two hours yesterday. How do you say it in a Chinese way? Well, the Chinese sentence should be, I, yesterday, studied Chinese for two hours. Please note that for two hours is not when the action studying Chinese takes place. It's the duration and how long the action lasts. So two hours shouldn't go before the action. It should just date after the action studied Chinese. Of course, the time word yesterday is when the action takes place, so it should go before the action. Now I'm going to ask you a question. What if you have several time words at the same time in one Chinese sentence? Let's say you have five o'clock, afternoon, tomorrow in one sentence. How would you arrange them? Well, here's the rule. When you have different time words or location words, the way to arrange them is moving the focus from big to small. So for time, the sequence goes like this. Year, month, week, day, part of the day, which can be morning, afternoon or evening, and clock time. So here among these three words, five o'clock, afternoon, and tomorrow. Tomorrow is the biggest, so it goes first. Afternoon is part of the day, so it goes second. And then they should be followed by five o'clock, only a point of time in the afternoon. So to say I study with lily at the library tomorrow at five in the afternoon, we say I, tomorrow, afternoon, five o'clock, done with time. Now it comes to location, which is at the library with lily study. Get it? As for location, you'll notice that Chinese address telescope in from country to city to street to building and to apartment. Hey, everything's consistent. You probably already know this, but in Chinese, our personal names are ordered to start big with a family name and end small with a personal name. So my full name in Chinese is Cheng Yangyang instead of Yangyang Cheng. Alright, that's all for this lesson. We're going to continue to talk about the Chinese word order in our next lesson. Zài jiàn.