Word order
Mandarin is Subject–Verb–Object like English, and with no conjugation or cases, word order does all the grammatical work. The one big habit to build: time and place come BEFORE the verb.
The template
Subject + Time + Place + Verb + Object
| 我 | 明天 | 在北京 | 见 | 他 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| wǒ | míngtiān | zài Běijīng | jiàn | tā |
| I | tomorrow | in Beijing | meet | him |
我明天在北京见他 — "I'll meet him in Beijing tomorrow." English tacks tomorrow and in Beijing on at the end; Mandarin never does:
| English order (wrong in Mandarin) | correct Mandarin |
|---|---|
| 我见他在北京 ✗ | 我在北京见他 wǒ zài Běijīng jiàn tā |
| 我去上海明年 ✗ | 我明年去上海 wǒ míngnián qù Shànghǎi |
Time can also move in front of the subject for emphasis: 明天我不来 míngtiān wǒ bù lái — "tomorrow, I'm not coming". What it can never do is follow the verb.
Big-to-small, always
Times and addresses run from largest unit to smallest:
2026年8月19日早上八点 — year → month → day → morning → 8 o'clock 中国上海市南京路 — China → Shanghai → Nanjing Road
Same logic as the sentence itself: setting first, detail second.
Modifiers come BEFORE the noun — all of them
Anything describing a noun is fronted with 的 de, even whole clauses (Mandarin has no word for "who/that/which"):
| 红色的车 hóngsè de chē | "red car" | adjective + 的 |
| 我的车 wǒ de chē | "my car" | possessor |
| 我昨天买的车 wǒ zuótiān mǎi de chē | "the car I bought yesterday" | relative clause, fronted |
The last row is where European speakers strain: "the car that I bought yesterday" becomes "[I-yesterday-bought]-的 car".
Topic first
Mandarin loves promoting what the sentence is about to the front, then commenting on it:
这本书我看过 zhè běn shū wǒ kàn guo — "this book, I've read (it)" 北京烤鸭很有名 Běijīng kǎoyā hěn yǒumíng — "Beijing duck (topic) — famous"
No pronoun echoes it later (no "I've read it"). Fronted position also signals definiteness — see the Articles chapter.
What never moves
- Questions: no inversion, ever — 你去哪儿？nǐ qù nǎr? — "where are you going?" keeps statement order.
- Verb and object stay together: nothing squeezes between them except 了/过. Duration goes after the verb, repeating it if there's an object: 我学中文学了两年 wǒ xué Zhōngwén xué le liǎng nián — "I've studied Chinese for two years."
The takeaway
One template — Subject, Time, Place, Verb, Object — plus everything-before-the-noun. Drill "time and place before the verb" until it's automatic; it fixes half of all beginner sentences on its own.
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