Master These Tiny Chinese Words For HUGE Speaking Gains

there are select few Chinese characters that when learned will lead to disproportionately huge gains in your spoken Chinese and I'm talking about rather mysterious little things called

particles I'm going to teach you right now all of the most useful and common particles in the whole of the Chinese language in this video so particles are always individual characters they're

never multiple characters they have no inherent meaning on their own they only get meaning from the context surrounding them and generally they are fifth tone neutral tone and they're usually at the

end of a sentence or a phrase now despite being small and subtle with their little neutral fifth tones they do three very powerful things when it comes

to speaking and understanding Chinese they change the tense of what's being said indicating past present or future they change structure of the sentence they change the relationship between

words and they change the mood or the tone of what's being said they alter the emotion behind the words so we're going to address all of the particles for each

of these three categories right now this is the only video you'll ever need on particles let's do it so let's start with the particles that change tents here they are there are a couple of ways

of changing tents not just using these four particles you can also change tense in Chinese by using different time words Chinese is very contextual so if you

want to make a a sentence in the future you would use a future time often such as tomorrow or quickly or about to or next week right or if you want to say

something in the past you would say before or last time you know and it will be understood contextually what is being said in Chinese we do not conjugate

verbs like we do in English so in English we say has have

be been we don't do any of this in Chinese it's actually way easier in the Chinese so let's start with L the first

key use of L in a sentence in Chinese is when you want to express the completion of an action right

so this here is saying I ate lunch the eating of lunch has been completed what cha

I ate lunch the second major usage of is showing a change in state of something let me show you what I mean p the

weather that means change and then l l is change to cold L is always added at the end not necessarily the whole sentence but after a verb or an

adjective after the predicate essentially what is mainly being spoken about that's actually happening in the sentence it's added at the end to

indicate that a state has changed so the weather was not cold and now it is sometimes when you're just starting out the placement of L or can confuse

you throw you for a loop don't worry it's just always these two things it's one of them it's completion of an action or change of state and it can be in the

past present or the future so often people consider L as being a past tense thing but it's not it can be in the

future too for example y sh you L this L here is saying it's about to rain so that change of state can happen in the

future or the past right or maybe even in the present right so ya is a way of indicating the future

it's going to it's also the word for want in Chinese but we use it to mean this thing is going to

happen is rain next is the most common use of would probably be in expressing where something is located so for example

what the closest translation of D in this context would probably be at it could also be on or in I'm at home what

day yeah and of course it can be more specific locations such as M sha sh the cat is on the sofa so you can see here that

sh here that is technically what means on right so that's on taken care of and day is not is it's not on it doesn't

really translate into English to be honest but the closest thing we have in English today in this context would be I guess on or at or in but the actual

definition of Z would be located but there really is no direct translation we just use this little

particle to express the location of anything so cat located sofa on now d as well as showing where

something is in terms of space it can also Express something is continuously happening in terms of time let me show you what I

mean he is doing homework so really it's the ing here pretty straightforward so without

this here would just be he does homework but if you want to say say that something is happening continuously

then you would always use before the verb and that's it that's D now let's move on to the next tense changing particle gu so gu is used to express

that something has happened before in the past at some point right so you've experienced something it's often referred to as the experience marker

right so just put it after any verb and it will show that you've done that thing before so I could say it's often uh written as a fourth tone but really in speech it comes

across as a fifth tone because you say it when you say it quickly and what this is indicating is

the have been or I've been to China so instead of all that have been went go goes all this stuff we just say gu or look now as well as an experienced

marker G is used to just like L indicate the completion of an action so let me illustrate this with a really common phrase that is spoken all the time in

Chinese and it's a way of basically asking how are you it's it's a way of greeting someone and inquiring about their health or just you know just making conversation in a very short sort

of way and that is there's that L again right the L here is have you completed deled the action of eating a meal ma ma is like the

question mark essentially ma is uh question mark we'll get to that as another particle that we're going to get to in a minute so when someone says they're asking have you eaten and

they are asking that question genuinely but often it's just a way of just saying hey how you doing it's just a way that Chinese people greet each other uh now I've heard that this is due to the

famines that happened in the last sort of you know several decades ago uh during like the Great Leap Forward and things like that it became sort of a way of inquiring about People's Health

and it's sort of been cemented into um the culture now there's a few ways of answering this um you could just

say right L eaten you know like eat L I have completed that action yes that's fine but a common way is to use the word gu in there

so I've eaten basically saying yes so here gu is saying that uh this action has been completed so you could say what you could just remove gu completely and

you wouldn't really say what right by itself you would always sort of package it with L together but it's just another way of expressing completion of an action in this context you could also

say you could take this character and put it there there's lots of different VAR variations on this but they all mean the same thing just to cement this idea for

you let's use another example sentence with gu as a completion of an action particle this one says so this

part is saying after eating lunch right jeel is like saying and then I will and then I'll go based on what I've said before so

so it's saying right after lunch that Jo is kind of adding that and then or immediately after or right after I will go technically this

sentence is in the future right and G just like L is a completion of an action but it can also be used in the future tense as well as the past tense so just keep that in mind

now the final tense changing particle is Du so du du just like indicates something is happening continuously but it's used in a slightly different way

and the difference is I got to say relatively subtle from a conscious perspective but once you start consuming the language and just immersing in Chinese and reading example sentences

listening to example sentences you will gradually grasp the subtle yet key difference between and so we tend to use

for things that are just continuously happening but they are also while they're happening they're completely happening the entire time they are unchanged so for

example like the door is open like it's not sort of flapping in the wind right it's not sort of open then close it's it's open you wouldn't say you would say

let me explain this with a few more examples so this one he is wearing a red coat now in this context if you

said removed the and we added in here the what that would actually Express is

he is trying on or he's putting on a red coat whereas tranga is he's wearing the coat and it is continuously being worn while I'm talking if you

said that would mean I am watching TV and I'm watching it attentively I'm not taking my eyes off it whereas if I said I might be looking at the TV just

sort of like eating chips or uh talking to my wife at the same time but I'm generally doing that activity of watching TV right if I said what I'm

that means I am taking a book I'm picking up a book I'm in that process would say but if I said that would mean I'm holding a book

in my hands if I said that would mean it's raining outside and if I said that would also mean it's raining

what's the difference well is like a general continuous thing that's happening but technically it could have intermittently stopped

raining at various points generally speaking it's reigning but if you said that means as I'm saying this thing definitely 100% it is raining right now

and if this is not yet clear what the difference between and is do not worry about it as we always say to our course members I can consciously explain grammar but if you don't get it

consciously after one explanation don't worry about it your much more powerful subconscious brain will certainly understand this instinctively subconsciously after enough immersion

now let's move on to the second category of particles the particles that change structure the relationships between words there are only three of these and

they are all pronounced in the exact same way du du and du let's talk about this du first this is the most common Chinese character in the entire language

and it's used in almost every sentence it seems so the first way it's used is l linking two elements within a sentence together so check this example sentence

out do you see that red book that means see that

red what is doing here is connecting red with so we can't just say red book we have to

say connecting the adjective to the noun du is often used at the end of a phrase or a sentence as well to stand in for something that has been sort of deleted

from the sentence due to obviousness of context so for example which book do you like which you like which which book do you

like so this du is kind of like the function of one in this I like that one or this one the red one right du is indicating the sh the book that we were

talking about in this context and a major thing that du does is Express possession so du here expresses the idea

of his instead instead of HE it changes into his his house is big pretty straightforward right so that's the

first du the most common by far du now this next du is also relatively common what it does is when pronounced this way this character is a

so in this literally means multiple sound character it can also be pronounced d and when it is pronounced d it

means Earth or land which is absolutely nothing to do with its usage as a particle so let's

focus on its usage as a particle for now when us as a particle du has a really straightforward usage which is it basic basically adds

this on the end of adjectives and makes them into adverbs so kin means happy and is happily she smiled

happily means serious and when we add in the it adds it makes it into seriously

that means do homework finally we have du another du so this du generally what it does is it changes a verb right so give you an example

sentence so it's saying he runs very fast so you can see here that the DU immediately follows p a verb it pretty

much always follows a verb like this she sings very well again we got the CH the verb here so it's expressing how the verb

verbed how the doing word did its thing du is also used in a rather unique and special kind of compound word a compound word in Chinese is a word that's made up of more than one character if there's a

verb and a result this is a specific kind of compound word you can put duh in between these two characters to show whether or not the result of the verb

can be achieved so for example b means to achieve something to do something ban means to do something and is the compliment the result that's saying yes

I can achieve it or it has been achieved if you say that means it can be done it's physically possible but if you say with the in the middle which is also a fifth

toe in this case then it's saying this cannot be achieved so du is like the positive version of that n adult is saying I can take this thing and it's physically possible to move it whereas

this massive Boulder for example or this house right I cannot just pick it up and take it away so it's there to to express possibility essentially and it can also be used together with B at the end of a

verb or after a verb to indicate the same thing so triple is saying this thing can't be eaten or it can't finish eating this thing is a very common one

saying this thing can't be rushed is like hurrying something up like come on like stressing out about something next we have the third and final type of particle in Chinese they are called

modal particles they are particles that change the mood or the tone of what is being said essentially change the emotion behind the words but before we jump in I just want to point out that

yes Chinese is a tonal language so in English we use different tones to express different emotions behind what's

being said so we might say yes or yes or yes yes like these are all different yeses very different yeses right and you

might be thinking well in Chinese they can't do that they can only use particles to express mood or tone actually there are ways in Chinese of

expressing intonation and mood with the way you say with with tone or um exaggerating certain syllables so for

example what like saying I am a person I am a

person I am a person or I'm just one person I am a person as in I'm not an animal so there are a bunch of mood or

tone particles mood changing particles in Chinese here are basically all of them right I like to be completionist in these videos I like to give a full side

and so far there are maybe one or two particles that I haven't included in this video but essentially all of the useful ones in the entire language I've included and these are basically all of the mood changing particles in Mandarin

Chinese so let's start off with the super common One MA really simple ma is a particle that just acts as a question mark and it turns a statement into a yes

and no question so the here is essentially the question mark if I remove the

ma it would be you like Chinese food it's just a statement all right not sure when you would actually use that but it would be a grammatically correct

sentence to say that so no depending on how you say it so there's sort of two levels to adding tonality or mood in Chinese one is actually using the particle itself but even the particle

itself can be used in different ways depending on how you use use it n can be a gentle sort of inquiry so n at the end of a question or it could be rather

Stern sort of pressing inquiry and it can also mean how about or what about the thing I just said so let's first focus on inquiry so it can be insistence

in a question or it can be softening the question so for example this question here right it could be a very soft way depending on how your face is n or it

could be youa right it could be a very uh Stern way of insisting on an answer to a question or it can be just like hey where where are

you off to right now good sir right depending on your face or your tone of voice let's say another example of this would

be like hey what are you up to or what are you doing right so depending on uh how you use it the tone can be

different no it also kind of serves the purpose of what about this thing that we're talking about so someone asks you a question about yourself you tell them and then you might

say you like what about you essentially it serves that purpose but that still falls into the category of insistence in the question and softening a question

really next is b b can be used at the end of a sentence to do a few different rather subtly different things so first it can give a suggestion a light mild suggestion

or depending on how it's used depending on the context could be a mild command let me show you what I mean we go watch movie B so that is a

suggestion so hey how about we go watch a movie let's go watch a movie but if you were to say you're saying go and go and do your homework it's in a nice way it's like

off you go to do your homework is often used with which means okay to sort of consent to something or approved to something but you're just

saying okay I I agree um I'm okay with this idea I guess so I agree with your opinion you also use but at the end when you're doubtful

about something or expressing doubt here is like a future thing saying something will happen he's not going to come is he that

but is sort of saying not going to come right adding that doubt to the sentence now don't worry not all of these particles have so many subtle nuances to them most of them are fairly

straightforward but the first three there maybe a couple of others do have a bunch of different usages but again you will get used to all these don't be intimidated by them you get used to them

over time over just consuming Chinese content and interacting with Chinese people this next one ah has also a few different usages so ah the first and I

would say most common use of ah is to add enthusiasm to what you're saying so for example saying this is really

great is like this is great that's great but is like adding that almost the exclamation mark here is kind of provided by that ah here another thing

ah does if you add it on the end and say it in a slightly different way it adds care to the sentence so for example commonly when someone leaves your house

or you're at a restaurant and they're leaving for you right you would say something in Chinese always pretty much even if it's a close friend or if it's a

distant relative or just a business partner whatever it is it's just polite to say this thing which is manol slow leave that's literally what it means but it's a way of saying take care it's just

a Chinese thing just every time you're somewhere with someone you're speaking Chinese right just and they leave and you're not leaving with them you just say Manz all but if you add a ah on the

end so Manz all ah like sort of a bit more emphasis than you would normally what that does it adds care to what you're saying it adds

sincerity okay so manol ah and manol they are different and you'll seriously impress people when you add that ah on the end I think ah is also just the ah

like ah like in English right I forgot my key it's just the a h a standard a that we have in English now now another unique way of using a is

when you're listing things you don't always have to use it when you make any list of anything in Chinese it's not like a strict rule I guess but it is very very common so for

example we have all the fruits we have all sorts of fruits P add as you're listing these things next we have yah which just like a

Expresses in enthusiasm or excitement about something would be you're here again Y is kind of adding that exclamation mark at the end of the

sentence you're here yay and it can also just be a oh at the beginning of a sentence so right oh so the Y is like the oh

you're pregnant great it's also combined with a so is a really common phrase are it all the time

a just means oh my oh my goodness oh oh man you know I use it a lot when you know just when something mildly frustrating has occurred now I've also

come to pick up uh another way that yah is used in just general daily life and it's used to express when something is obvious right so now

water right you sort like got that sort of like that's yours duh right that's not mine mine that's yours so in this context it's more like

a the that's what it says to me now this next One MA although it's pronounced in the exact same way as this one I often find that it's slightly longer and I'll show you what I mean

so so if that was a question mark that Ma it would be right but this ma is a technically it's the same tone it's a neutral tone

but it's for me it's often slightly elongated so right this is very simple and what this is also doing is kind of adding

another idea of du now this is not rude it's not like duh like being rude to someone uh but it's just kind of like for example here

it's saying this is very simple if you just said you're just flatly stating this is simple but if you say

right what you're saying is come on this is simple right and then you go on to explain why it's simple so it is a friendly sort of posit it's not like a negative annoying thing that often people are sarcastic or call it

basically implying that you're dumb or something like that it's nothing like that it's often used in a way of saying like right do you know what I mean so for example you might be telling a story and you might be saying oh yesterday I

put on my coat I put on my Cod so oh because it was cold right that's like that Ma is kind of doing it's like you know what I mean right

it's cold right it's just a way of uh it's a really common particle that's put into speech like all the time and it makes you sound really natural and also gives you that little bit extra time to

sort of gather your thoughts and it sort of connects you to the other person so you know what I'm saying right so yeah go ahead and uh listen out for that one and try to incorporate it into speech

the next one is B right so B it's a fifth tone as well and it's similar to Mar that it implies that the answer is obvious so for

example right I say ah he already knew that obviously right of course he already knew that the way I see ba in compared to the last one we just covered ma is I think B is more of just a

one-sided thing just like ah I it's obvious to me right whereas ma is kind of like a way of connecting with the other person as you're talking it's like it's obvious right you know what I'm

saying like it's trying to get their feedback or Connection in some way that's just my take on it maybe some native speakers would feel differently that's just my personal experience but this next one is W really

straightforward W is just kind of the Chinese wow or wo right so you might say

wow wow so beautiful wow so beautiful or

is oh in English oh oh oh just oh oh I understand oh really simple next

one uh or now this is actually written believe it or not like NG right that's the legal opinion way of writing it as well as uh so this is actually one of my

favorite things to say in Chinese if someone's talking at you right or saying something to you and you can just say uh like yes it sounds really rude right it

sounds like something a a a hormonal teenager might say to their mother and father is they're like giving him yeah like but actually if you say uh it's completely fine it's just like right I'm

with you yep okay yes I understand I think the best translation of in Chinese would

be I agree so as someone's talking they can be like just saying stuff and you just say uh uh uh right so this next one

a is more like a sigh right but it's a way of sort of

vocalizing a sigh I guess so i y I lost again ah I lost again I I lost again now when you look up in the dictionary when

I looked up I is a first tone but I personally don't hear it very often as a first tone for me I is a fourth tone hey

well you're Sher a I lost again I don't really hear it as a first tone I usually hear is a fourth tone hey well you're this next

one right comes through the nose right it is uh closest I guess to is in Chinese for me I hear that

mostly from like sort of young maybe slightly immature girls um or young ladies in Chinese sort of um doing something which the Chinese refer to as

sad sadal which means uh well there's no real direct translation it's just one of those words uh but sadal is kind of when

Chinese I guess this is more of it's actually quite an a an Asian thing um in other countries in Asia too but especially in China where girls will act

like silly like childish or uh pretend to be angry or upset but like you know just to try and get the attention of

their other half um and this is a sound that they'll often make H what's right this was I don't believe it h i don't believe it next one super

common super simple hi right it's a particle it's literally just transliteration of English right hi

hi remember the ah there that's also just expressing excitement hi s of a more friendly excited enthusiastic way

of saying hello this is L Plus plus ah so we're about to go do something so L is a completion of an action or a change

of state right so we're we're not moving and then now we're going to go and eat right so that's woman right but this is a way of

enthusiastically announcing that you're going to do something or that you have done something could be in the past could be the future so it's enthusiastically expressing L basically

L plus a you remember L of course we covered that earlier on in the video this character which I've terribly drawn just

so is just a way of excitedly announcing we're off to eat ha is the Chinese version of ha as in haha you're so

funny ha so that's the most common way that ha is used of course but ha is also used in a couple of other ways so ha ha I know

how to solve it now like aha kind of that ha I know how to solve this problem now and a much more subtle way that it's used but it's also very very common

relatively speaking is placed at the end of something to act as sort of a reminder or like a exaggerating the importance of something that you've just said

so is absolutely fine by itself without the ha just saying don't forget but if you say what that's doing is just saying you're not going to forget are you right

don't forget all right like it's just making sure that you're not going to forget by adding that at the end and then finally we got LW which is the only character with this pronunciation just

like or is the only character with this o by itself pronunciation like the only pinion word or character that uses uh

just that opinion spelling law law is the only character that uses just L by itself another example be

sh so sh is raining sh is oh it is raining it's just a standard way sh is sort of excited whereas sh it's like saying oh look it's raining sort of like

a py sort of enthusiastic almost like childlike expression of like Yay it's raining or oh look it's raining just sort of more Pepe I think I like yeah I like that word I think that's the best

way of explaining uh the emotion behind law is peepe and what law does is very similar to the

LA that we learned as well so wutan law is very similar to woman Chan LA but law is even more excited law is just like

it's almost like a childish sort of Gul Delight in what's happening um when Chan law it's just like come on guys I'm really happy about this let's go eat you

know it's like a a unique happy experience that we're about to enjoy two it's just general excitement right so very very similar and you'll get the

differences subtly between the two uh as you progress as you immerse in the language all right so those are all the particles that you'll ever need to know in Mandarin Chinese laid out nicely for you do not forget to click the link in

the description below and download the PDF and amazing audio files that come with this including audio male and female studio quality non aai audio for

every single example sentence that I've covered here today so you can actually listen and repeat not only improve your pronunciation but actually acquire what you learn instead of just watching the video going oh that was cool and then

forgetting everything soon after so go ahead and do that and also make sure to watch this one next and I will see you in the next video bye-bye