[Photo/VCG]

Many Chinese learners struggle with word order (词序, cí xù) when they are trying to make sentences (造句, zào jù) in Chinese. Even some advanced students occasionally make grammatical mistakes (语法错误, yǔ fǎ cuò wù), highlighting the importance of helping beginners and intermediate students gain a solid understanding of word order in Chinese sentences. This article can help you get a general idea about some of the most basic Chinese sentence structures (句子结构, jù zi jié gòu) concerning word order.

What's the basic sentence structure?

If you try to compare the most basic Chinese sentence structure with its equivalence in English, it can be easily seen that both of them follow the "subject + verb + object" structure.

A good example of this structure is the following sentence:

我学中文 wǒ xué zhōng wén "I study Chinese"

In this simple sentence, “我 (wǒ), I” serves as the subject, whereas "学 (xué), to study" and "中文 (zhōng wén), Chinese" represent the verb and the object respectively.

How to add time?

If you would like to add a time-related element to this sentence, such as "I study Chinese in the morning", the word order of its Chinese version will be a bit different.

Generally speaking, time-related elements like five o'clock (五点钟) or every day (每天) cannot be put at the end of a sentence (句尾, jù wěi), which is different when compared with an English sentence. It usually goes either before or after the subject, and that means it is allowed to be placed at the beginning of a sentence.

Therefore, there are two ways to say "I study Chinese in the morning":

我上午学中文 wǒ shàng wǔ xué zhōng wén, OR 上午我学中文 shàng wǔ wǒ xué zhōng wén

The word "上午 (shàng wǔ), morning" can either come before or after the subject.

How to add a location?

If you want to specify where you study Chinese, for example, "I study Chinese at school", the location (地点, dì diǎn) is usually put after the subject, similar to the structure discussed above

Hence, its equivalence in Chinese should be:

我在学校学中文 wǒ zài xué xiào xué zhōng wén, in which "学校 (xué xiào)" means school, and it represents the location.

How to add time and location?

Finally, when you would like to include both a time-related element and a location in a sentence, such as "I study Chinese at school in the morning", one important thing that you need to bear in mind (记住, jì zhù) is that the time-related element always comes before the location, and all the other rules (规则, guī zé）remain the same.

Therefore, the whole sentence in Chinese would be:

我早上在学校学中文 wǒ zǎo shàng zài xué xiào xué zhōng wén, OR 早上我在学校学中文 zǎo shàng wǒ zài xué xiào xué zhōng wén

It's important to familiarize yourself with these structures as they give you a clearer idea about the logic behind simple Chinese sentences.

Soon enough, you'll know these structures by heart.