Living in the Past

My Chinese skills are slowly but surely progressing.  One of the most interesting things I’ve learned recently is how Chinese deals with present and past tense.  For example, consider the following two phrases.

I am going to work.
I went to work.

In Chinese the phrase “I am going to work” is wǒ qù gōng zuò, which literally translates to “me go work.” How would you say “I went to work” in a language which has no past or present tenses in its words?  You add a word on the end to indicate when it happened.  This word is called a particle, and in the case of the past the particle is le, pronounced “luh.” Note the lack of a tone marking above it, this indicates it’s used in the neutral tone, meaning that it’s said softly without emphasis at the end of the sentence.  Thus “I went to work” is exactly the same as “I am going to work,” except the particle is on the end.

I am going to work.  wǒ qù gōngzuò
I went to work.  wǒ qù gōngzuò le

What you’re saying is “Me go work (in the past.)” So if you wanted to say “I am going to eat a meal” you would say wǒ qù chī fàn which literally translates to “Me go eat meal.” To say “I went and ate a meal” you would say wǒ qù chī fàn le, meaning “Me go eat meal (in the past).”

Chinese is on so many levels utterly simple, and in many other areas infinitely complex.

I like that part of learning Chinese, it’s like getting 2 verbs for the price of one. It’s not like, say, spanish or Latin, where you need to learn a form of the verb for each person, singular and plural, and each tense.

Chinese makes up for it, though, with other crazy things!

Yeah, definitely.  I many ways this is a hell of a lot easier to understand that English. It’s the same with plurals.  To use the example above, “I go to work” is wǒ qù gōngzuò.  If you want to say “We go to work” you simply use the same sentence and add the particle “men” to indicate plural, making wǒ men qù gōngzuò, or “Me (plural) go work.” And if you want to say “We went to work” you take that same sentence and add le, making wǒ men qù gōngzuò le, or “Me (plural) go work (in the past).

Thus you take the base sentence and simply by adding a couple of fifth tone particle words you can change the tense or plurality of the sentence.

It’s great stuff, I love learning this language.