I’m a native Mandarin speaker and I don’t even know most of these rules because they just so instinctive to me! This video is making me appreciate the power of language and how language changes the way we think.
说老师，真的谢谢! For me, grasping the concept of 了 I’m completed actions only made sense when I learned French. For example, in French, when talking about the past, there’s usually the completed/perfect past and the imperfect past. The French imperfect past (e.g. Je voulais devenir medecin) is clearer than it’s English counterpart. In English, the translation is: I “wanted” to become a doctor. It’s not really obvious in English whether the verb, wanted, was completed back then. You would need to say things like, “I had wanted”. TLDR: It’s easy to learn another language such as Mandarin Chinese when you can draw on other languages for reference points.
@@martinphipps2 No, Karl was addressing the video creator by calling her Teacher Shuo; the name goes before the title "Teacher" in Chinese, unlike in English when you put the last name after Mr./M(r)s.
You are a very good Chinese teacher, of you are not already working at a really good institution, you should consider applying, because i can assure you most my Chinese teachers i ever had in person or online could never explain 了 as clearly as you did. I know you said the sole credit is not yours, but you took the time to research a way those who dont speak fluent mandarin could understand.
The exact reason why she can use her own method to expain it so well is that she does not work for any institution and does not have to adjust to any one. She is a creator of her own success , not someone else's :)
@@donaldj.trumpet4205 Yes but a LOT of Chinese teachers think 了 indicates past tense. It probably means they don't understand the difference between the past tense and the present perfect. 我寫完了 does not mean "I wrote". It means "I have finished writing."
Martin Phipps yeah, exactly! I totally agree with you. I’m a Chinese native speaker and I really appreciate that English has categorized tenses in a relatively specific way compared to mandarin (verbs actually have no tense at all). It sometimes makes the language more accurate and simple in my opinion. While in this case Chinese has to rely on some time indicators in discourse when the tense is not present.
In linguistics we have an gramtical category called "aspect" which expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time. I've never seen chinese textbooks using this idea of aspect to teach Chinese for foreigners. You can think of 了 (finished action) as an aspect particle maybe like 着 or 在. In English, we have simple past, past perfect, past progressive for example. The tense are all past, but the action is in different progressions.
The simple past is the simple present in the past time. "I went to school" is the same as " i go to school" just in the past time The present perfekt should be rendered as le and past perfekt as le reffering to completed actions in the past.
I am not a native English speaker myself but for some reason when I am listening to you I dont feel any language barrier. I feel like you are talking so clear and understandable. Maybe it is because you are a great teacher :):P Good work keep it up !
As a native speaker,I think it's very hard to explain"le" to foreigners,but you do it.I think"le"is more than a past tense,but I can't say its other meanings until I watched this video.你太厉害“了”。
Yo. Same. I'm also japanese learning chinese. People keep telling me that my japanese is helping me learn chinese. Tbh it really doesn't help to know japanese.
My Chinese is still too basic to understand all of the words you used here, but I think I still totally understood the rules of when to use "le" - thank you for explaining so well!
Yea, although you can say I like this and you will be understood, but what I understood from her video is that we really don't need the ”现在”。。。。 when we say “我知道了” it automatically indicates “现在知道了”，就是说 “我知道了” indicates I didn't know before but now i know; so using 我知道了 makes use of the 了 in the right perspective even without "现在”. 我希望你明白我的意思☺️
The idea you're talking about near 6:34 in linguistics uses the names "speech time" (you call "the present", which is usually close enough) and "event time". What you call "the point in time that the context shows us" is called "reference time". In English, reference time shows up when you use future perfect tense: "When you read this, your video will have been published for six months". "When you read this" establishes a reference time after my speech (comment) time. The "will" puts the "event" in my future, while "have been" establishes that the event (your video being published) was completed in the past relative to the reference time.
This is really interesting! English actually also has this concept of completed or incomplete past as well. It’s referred to as “aspect” rather than tense. It’s not as overt as in some languages, but it does exist. For instance in Spanish you have yo sé (“I know”), yo sabía (“I knew” continuously), and yo supe (“I found out”, completed). In English some phrases that show completion or incompletion are not as easy to track grammatically since the term “found out” really means “knew but in a completed moment” but is described using different words. To some extent “was” is like incomplete past. For instance, “I was eating [set up of the story, background, incomplete task] and then all of a sudden a mouse scurried across the floor [completed task in one moment].” But you could also saying, “The mouse was scurrying [incomplete] but then I came in and started to eat” or “.... ate”. And you can also do things like, “I learned”, “I had learned”, “I will have learned by then” etc., which all have different aspects in addition to their tense. Xie xie!
Chinese verbs also show conditional + 2 sorts of, subjunctive verb modes.. These use certain auxiliarynverbs or adverbs. See i, Tuo Kobe. English Subjunctive in Spanish(?or reverse 3 parts in English + Chinese? Powrie, Shawn. Chinese. Counterfactual ...subjunctive +,conditional "(if... then...) section. Zhu, ni, hao yunqi!!
The use of 了 is similar to verbal "aspect" as opposed to tense - found in the Greek and Russian languages (perfective (completed) and imperfective (not completed) aspects); 了 being more or less a marker for the perfective aspect. There is a book "Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek: Verbal Aspect in Theory and Practice " By Toshikazu S. Foley (447 pages) which compares meticulously the use of 了, 过 and other Chinese verb markers with Greek verbal aspect system.
Doesn't English also have aspect? I'm pretty sure the perfect and progressive/continuous "tenses" of English are not true tenses, but aspects. Actually, the way she describes "le" makes it seem very similar to the English perfect tense/aspect.
English has aspect! "I eat" simple/habitual aspect, present tense "I am eating" continuous aspect, present tense "I have eaten" completed (perfective) aspect, present tense "I ate" simple aspect, past tense "I was eating" continuous aspect, past tense "I had eaten" completed aspect, past tense "I would eat (every day)" habitual aspect, past tense
I still have my Nintendo Donkey Kong 2 ‘game’n’watch’. I’m so happy to learn that it can also function as a time machine. Loved this lesson. Yes, these aspects of time tense logic have often seemed mysterious and almost incomprehensible. This could be a mini revolution in this aspect of my learning, thank you!
Wow! Thank you for breaking down the concept of time embedded in English and Chinese grammar like this! As a non-native English speaker, I now also learned from this video why was it so hard for people from my country to learn the whole time-relative grammar in English (past/present/perfect etc etc etc..). Never thought about it before that the way you think about time and describe action in relation to time are different in each culture and language!
Hi! Thx for the video❤ but I’m still confused how many times can I use 了in the sentence. What if I have two words representing two different changes. Or should I only use it once with one verb? And I’m confused with the order of 了。 why do we say 我毕业了就去你的城市。 我可以写 ”我毕业就去你的城市了”还是 ”我毕业了就去你的城市了？
3.41 in another lessons i saw that with verbs that expression feelings or thoughts don't put le, or it's just for completed actions and here for change of states can use le? Another thing is that i saw that to form negative sentences use mei without putting le or it's a rule for le when we use it for completed actions and not when we use it for change of state?
this is easy for Latin Spanish speaker. Le is "Ya" ya no te amo ya lo se lo quiero ya ya esta (terminado) hicistes la tarea? Si ya! ya hice la tarea. Estas casado?? Si ya me casé.
Really good! The “past tense” confusion is common when people speaking “tense languages” learn an “aspect language.” As an example, Turkish is very much an aspect language and their (very badly named) “past tense” is much more a perfective aspect, just like “le.” You could translate your “wo zhi dao le” almost exactly into the Turkish “past,” and western languages speakers are left scratching their heads. :-) I wish more Turkish teachers would explain it as clearly as you do!
I wonder who it was that first said that a (sentence-final) "了 indicates a change of state". In any case, this has gone "viral", and so many text books and teachers spout this definition. I finally figured out that this is only true if the verb is negated with 不. As illustrated in the example: 我父母不工作了 ("my parents don't work any more") (the situation has changed) But without the negation, I believe a sentence-final 了 indicates the current state of an ongoing situation (NO change). For example: 他一辈子住在香港了 ("He has lived in Hong Kong all his life") (and the situation is ongoing) If we take away the 了, then it's not clear that the situation is ongoing. Possibly, he passed away. Similarly, I think that 她二十岁就结婚了 means that "she was (already) married at the age of twenty". So, that was her status at that time. It doesn't talk about when she got married, or any kind of change. To say "she got married at the age of twenty" I think that should be something like 她二十岁那年结了婚. Unlike the sentence-final 了, this 了 after the verb indicates the completion of an action (or change of situation). ...... With so many comments here, I'm pretty sure no one will read mine, so I'm pretty sure I won't be "burned at the stake" for expressing such "heretical" ideas. :-)
To be honest in Bahasa Indonesia (my native language) we have a similar mindset of action and tenses. But when being taught about it in English my brain hurts because I need to switch mindset three times, from English to Bahasa Indonesia then to Mandarin. Hahaha
Wow I’m glad you recommended us to retrain our brain when it comes to the grammar tenses. I’m a Vietnamese student and I’m learning times/days and after watching your video it occurred to me that we look at the time line as past/present/future. For example i was learning the words “last month/next month”...you’ll need to look up these words in Vietnamese. The point here is the word last reference to the past which is on the left side of the timeline and the word next is on the right side. In Vietnamese the sequence of these words are on opposite sides but the translation comes out to be understood. This got me thinking the concept of 了is totally different from English tenses. I am very intrigued with the concept 了. Thank you for the lecture!
I have spotted something in 15:01 time-stamp that is the English Language equals: dial or dials; deal or deals! Thank you and good-bye from Sarajevo 🇧🇦!
There is also another structure for 了: it's called the "double 了" sentence. It's used to describe an action which started in the past and is still in progress at this moment. Example: 我学了两年的汉语了 (I started to study Chinese 2 years ago and I am still studying today).
You're teaching people the wrong thing here. I'm native Chinese and one of the meaning of Le is past tense! Le and Jiu have many meanings. The way you explain is also confusing. Anyway, these are all foreigners learning Mandarin so no need to be perfect.
I think she already explained it on the video that 了 is also been using for things that happened in the past but already finished. I am still learning mandarin so I want to know which part of it that was wrong?
To exemplify the difference of tense and aspect just thing of the following: English has a present tense, and four aspects: Simple 1) I eat; Continuous 2) I am eating; Perfect 3) I have eaten; Combined 4) I have been eating. Move this to any tense (past, future, whatever) it will still be 4 aspects. Aspect is independent from tense. Hopefully this explanation helps...
We have a similar prob in Malaysian Chinese dialects. "Lah" is also used in Malay and similar homonyms in Chinese dialects like Cantonese (广东话) or Hokkien (福建花). Depending on contexts, the tones used may change its meaning!
2 years later, I found your channel and wow you couldn't have explained Le 了 better. With that, I came to realize in one Le 了 use case, we Filipinos have a similar particle in our sentences as well (in this case it's "Na"), which similarly indicates a change of state. 我不爱你'了' Wo Bú Aì Ni 'Le' "Di 'na' kita mahal" (base sentence: "Di kita mahal", 我不爱你, I don't love you) Hope I could learn more chinese in the long run. Thanks to your videos they're very helpful 💯 Also, aye 6:19 😆
Much of the material here is attempting to detail perfected aspect which may happen in past, present, or future tense context. 了 is a frequent indication of an action perfected, namely, used as a past event for reference. This is called aspect and is very different to tense yet causes confusion when detailing patterns since the terms overlap.
I just started learning Mandarin recently, this is probably a tad advanced for me (I understood maybe 10% of the words, probably even way less lol) but this lesson reminds me of "ya" in Spanish, and how it has a few different uses depending on context. In fact, it sometimes can be "anymore", similarly.
Good thing Cantonese has several different particles that function as 了 in it's various uses without having to differentiate. Same with 的地得, which thankfully don't all sound the same. 🤣
It marks the Perfective Grammatical Aspect in English it doesn't have a specific markation in english it is part of Simple Past Tense together with the Imperfective Aspect and the Imperfect Aspect while the Perfect Grammatical Aspect is in the Perfect Present Tense and in my language the Perfect Preterite Tense has both Perfective and Perfect Aspect
wow you are the best!!! This video was so clear, I FINALLY get it now. I was so confused for so long lol Also (as a native English speaker) I learned something new the other day! The grammar pattern that you speak of in this video is called Perfect Tense: Past Perfect Tense, Present Perfect Tense, and Future Perfect Tense 😊
我知道了，谢谢！ Little English tip: "I _hope_ this video will give you an Aha moment" instead of "I wish..." This is pretty subtle. "Wish" can be used with a noun phrase, like "I wish you a Merry Christmas." This is a positive sentiment, like the one you expressed. Or, "wish" can be used with a verb in a hypothetical, like "I wish it were snowing right now," or "I wish I had studied harder," but in these cases it's generally a sentiment of disappointment. "I wish things were different". "Wish" used with a future verb, as you've used it, sounds quite unnatural to my American ears. You could say "I wish it weren't going to rain tomorrow," which is about the future, but still hypothetical and still with the flavor of disappointment. But for a purely positive wish for the future with a verb, use "hope" instead: "I hope it will be sunny tomorrow." And hope also works with nouns, so "I hope for sun" also works. If you want a rule of thumb, I'd use "wish" when you want to imply the wish goes unfulfilled and "hope" when you want to leave that open-ended.
Your explanation about completed actions sounds exactly as if you are describing perfect tenses. Actually, "perfect"as in "perfect tense" means "completed".
[I had a dog --> the action was completed, this is an English logic] For the present you don’t have that dog, true, but you need to take the time machine to go back, say, 10 years ago, that time you were in progress of having that dog, that’s why you don’t use了。
Ya know, as someone who has studied linguistics, if people just explained 了 in these terms i would have got it in like 10 seconds. But no, they gotta go about explaining it like it's hella complicated, when it's just about open and closed actions, and the time marker itself just marks the point of reference. Ez.
Great content! I really like the fonts, especially the handwriting like at the ends. If I might suggest sth, maybe some exercises at the end of the video (together with answers)?
Amazing. Can anyone help me with a question? Why doesn't "after I graduate I'll go to your city" translate to "我毕业后会去你的城市"? I really wanna take the time machine but "我毕业了就去你的城市" sounds like it basically means "I graduated, now I'm going to your city" which is different. Sorryyy, I'm confuuuuused.
LOL i laughed at your example of 80lbs before, but now are 90lbs. Both of those sound grossly underweight to me. ;) I’d want to know how to say -please gain some weight- in that case. ;)
Thanks so much, it helps me a lot. However, there is a sentence I am not sure if I can use 了 or not. Could you please help me with this. 我女儿还只六十岁的时候就学中文 I think I can not say 学了 because this action did not complete at she was 6 years old. Because studying a language is long-term and repeated. Can you help me if I am right or not. Moreover I know that there is a usage for 2 了 in 1 sentence it describes about a action in progress. But I watched repeatedly your 2 videos about this I can't find out it. So I am so confused now for this case . could you please help me ?
Extremely useful information. By the way, a suggestion, write down the English translation of your sentences and highlight in red the English equivalent of the topic you are talking about, for example. AFTER I graduate, I will pay you a visit. In that case, the English speaker will know that "LE" is referring to the equivalent of "AFTER" in English (I'm talking about the idea, semantics, not a literal translation). Your example of the time machine was awesome. Please, keep making more videos like this one! 我看了你的录像,我知道了. < Is this sentence correct?
I'm so confused- How do you know in a sentence what 了 is used as? Since 了 is used for change of state and completed action..Uh..Right? Please don't attack me for not listening to the full video- My brain hurts to even focus anymore ;-; so I'd be very thankful if someone answered this question--
Even though your theory is good, i understood it and it did help, there is something that isn't clear. In your example "I got married when i was 20", If i think from perspective of me 20 years ago (as you said, use time machine), then i was getting married and was NOT married. Action was complited only at some point of that year. I didn't understand why did you use 了 there. By this logic both "i had a dog 20 years ago" and "i bought a dog 20 years ago" would be a completed action (lets assume that i already don't have a dog) and the ONLY situation where you wouldn't use 了 is in sentence "when i was buying a dog 20 years ago something happened." Just to make it clear, I understand why 了 used with graduation (because you mentioned something that you will do after you graduate and that implies completing the graduation) but first example is still mysterious.
how about the differences between "V了O", "VO了", and "V了O了" (all of them has the same meaning, to indicate that an act has been completed)? i still find it hard to put 了 correctly. ive been trying to solve this by searching on google and asking some of my friends, but yea i still dont understand. i hope this question can be seen. 多谢
Thanks a lot for the perfect explanation, would you please tell me for example in this sentence, what is the reason for using 了。 天阴了。 Is it for emphasis, I saw it in a textbook,
After watching the video I said to myself "For a while, I was confused about things in the future being considered "completed", since there is no way we could know for a fact that they will happen. But I guess it makes sense. After all, the Earth taking a year to orbit the sun is going to have happened". And then I realised what I just said. "Going to have happened". I was referring to something in the future as if it had happened in the past. Tense is very strange! Even in English.
Although I was born, raised and was educated in the United States, learning Chinese has made me more aware of the “mechanics” of the English language (and Spanish). Therefore, although I know of the importance of thinking in the language you are learning, now I know that the sooner I understand the mechanics/grammar, the sooner I will grasp the true meaning and feeling of the language. Thank you for your hard work 😊
After thinking a while,了 is not really past tence，more like perfect tense because the word 了 does show us the imformation that something had been done or has just been done. The point of view from this video is reasonable. Did you eat breakfast this morning？ I did. 我吃过了 so the word 了 easily makes people think it is past tence. It shows us the imformation but it is not really belong to past tence.
a confusing exception: 我學了四年了 means "I have been studying for 4 years" (and am still studying). Why does the 2nd 'le' add a meaning of continuation? 我學了四年 means "I studied for 4 years" (and am not studying anymore). 但是我自己學中文才六個月，所以我可能寫錯了。
hey loashi i am so happy that i saw your video i am learning chines in china still can not open my mouth to speak a good sentence ..but right now i understand some of the stuff because of your video thanks and keep the video coming ,,,i am so going to watch all the video like your word u need to format your English brain and welcome chinese language in it
teacher i find different to understand what Chinese people are speaking when they speak it too fast, I can understand Chinese only by reading any advice for me
I got married when I was 20. But you first turned 20 and only then got married! So why 了？I understand if you got married when you were 19 and you say: When I was 20, I was (already) married.
So jiu indicates that something happens early, so this must refer to a time nearer your 20th birthday, when you say about taking the time machine back it must stay there, either when you are 20, because this time will last a year or 1988 to wait for you to be born, you mentioned that using Le at the end emphasised the getting married process and it comes after the object, yet Le at the end of a sentence also indicates a completed action, so as well as used for a completed action it's also used for emphasis.
I’m a native Mandarin speaker and I don’t even know most of these rules because they just so instinctive to me! This video is making me appreciate the power of language and how language changes the way we think.
你是中国从哪个地方？
我是中国从广东
@@Bobo-de8zt OK。 你是女人吗？
我也是！从前我从未意识到中文里“了”“就”之类的字的用法如此复杂，因为它们都是生活中最常用的字词。中文虽然没有复杂的词性和时态，但最基础的字词确实不容易用得地道
I had the same epiphany about English. Once I started learning other languages, it opened my eyes to how my own worked on a deeper level
"You need to throw out your brain to understand Chinese"
Challenge accepted.
😂😂😂
说老师，真的谢谢! For me, grasping the concept of 了 I’m completed actions only made sense when I learned French. For example, in French, when talking about the past, there’s usually the completed/perfect past and the imperfect past. The French imperfect past (e.g. Je voulais devenir medecin) is clearer than it’s English counterpart. In English, the translation is: I “wanted” to become a doctor. It’s not really obvious in English whether the verb, wanted, was completed back then. You would need to say things like, “I had wanted”.
TLDR: It’s easy to learn another language such as Mandarin Chinese when you can draw on other languages for reference points.
@@karltorento3358 Did you mean 老實說?
@@karltorento3358 How would you say in French "I had wanted to become a doctor but didn't succeed?"
@@martinphipps2 No, Karl was addressing the video creator by calling her Teacher Shuo; the name goes before the title "Teacher" in Chinese, unlike in English when you put the last name after Mr./M(r)s.
I got my "aha" moment thanks to you ^^ not sure I can use it well still but it was really helpful !
I’m agree with you 👍
You are a very good Chinese teacher, of you are not already working at a really good institution, you should consider applying, because i can assure you most my Chinese teachers i ever had in person or online could never explain 了 as clearly as you did. I know you said the sole credit is not yours, but you took the time to research a way those who dont speak fluent mandarin could understand.
Stay where you are. Be free. Your methods are perfect.
The exact reason why she can use her own method to expain it so well is that she does not work for any institution and does not have to adjust to any one. She is a creator of her own success , not someone else's :)
You know, a lot of Chinese teachers tell me that 了 means past tense and they get angry when I tell them it doesn't.
from my point, mandarin don’t actually have a ‘past tense’ like English does😂
@@donaldj.trumpet4205 Yes but a LOT of Chinese teachers think 了 indicates past tense. It probably means they don't understand the difference between the past tense and the present perfect. 我寫完了 does not mean "I wrote". It means "I have finished writing."
Martin Phipps yeah, exactly! I totally agree with you. I’m a Chinese native speaker and I really appreciate that English has categorized tenses in a relatively specific way compared to mandarin (verbs actually have no tense at all). It sometimes makes the language more accurate and simple in my opinion. While in this case Chinese has to rely on some time indicators in discourse when the tense is not present.
In linguistics we have an gramtical category called "aspect" which expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time. I've never seen chinese textbooks using this idea of aspect to teach Chinese for foreigners. You can think of 了 (finished action) as an aspect particle maybe like 着 or 在. In English, we have simple past, past perfect, past progressive for example. The tense are all past, but the action is in different progressions.
The simple past is the simple present in the past time.
"I went to school" is the same as " i go to school" just in the past time
The present perfekt should be rendered as le and past perfekt as le reffering to completed actions in the past.
I am not a native English speaker myself but for some reason when I am listening to you I dont feel any language barrier. I feel like you are talking so clear and understandable. Maybe it is because you are a great teacher :):P Good work keep it up !
Me too
As a native speaker,I think it's very hard to explain"le" to foreigners,but you do it.I think"le"is more than a past tense,but I can't say its other meanings until I watched this video.你太厉害“了”。
I'm a Japanese learning Chinese. This was one of the most comprehensible videos of 了！！
Yo. Same. I'm also japanese learning chinese. People keep telling me that my japanese is helping me learn chinese. Tbh it really doesn't help to know japanese.
@@FDE-fw1hd I hope someone can teach me Japanese and I teach him Chinese cos I'm Chinese,hahahaha
My Chinese is still too basic to understand all of the words you used here, but I think I still totally understood the rules of when to use "le" - thank you for explaining so well!
Thank you for this thoroughly explained video, this was extremely helpful (and needed). 现在知道了!
Yea, although you can say I like this and you will be understood, but what I understood from her video is that we really don't need the ”现在”。。。。 when we say “我知道了” it automatically indicates “现在知道了”，就是说 “我知道了” indicates I didn't know before but now i know; so using 我知道了 makes use of the 了 in the right perspective even without "现在”. 我希望你明白我的意思☺️
06:45 should be “perspective “ not “respective “ apologies!!
LOL you know I heard perspective🤷🏿♂️ I guess it was auto-correct in my brain because I’m English
I assumed you meant with respect to xx time frame, which is still perfect English
The idea you're talking about near 6:34 in linguistics uses the names "speech time" (you call "the present", which is usually close enough) and "event time". What you call "the point in time that the context shows us" is called "reference time". In English, reference time shows up when you use future perfect tense: "When you read this, your video will have been published for six months". "When you read this" establishes a reference time after my speech (comment) time. The "will" puts the "event" in my future, while "have been" establishes that the event (your video being published) was completed in the past relative to the reference time.
Keep all that Reichenbachian stuff away from here man. Most people just want to learn how to use a language, not how to be linguists.
The time machine concept- brilliant! Thank you!
This is really interesting! English actually also has this concept of completed or incomplete past as well. It’s referred to as “aspect” rather than tense. It’s not as overt as in some languages, but it does exist. For instance in Spanish you have yo sé (“I know”), yo sabía (“I knew” continuously), and yo supe (“I found out”, completed). In English some phrases that show completion or incompletion are not as easy to track grammatically since the term “found out” really means “knew but in a completed moment” but is described using different words.
To some extent “was” is like incomplete past. For instance, “I was eating [set up of the story, background, incomplete task] and then all of a sudden a mouse scurried across the floor [completed task in one moment].” But you could also saying, “The mouse was scurrying [incomplete] but then I came in and started to eat” or “.... ate”.
And you can also do things like, “I learned”, “I had learned”, “I will have learned by then” etc., which all have different aspects in addition to their tense.
Xie xie!
Chinese verbs also show conditional +
2 sorts of, subjunctive verb modes..
These use certain auxiliarynverbs or adverbs.
See
i, Tuo Kobe. English Subjunctive in
Spanish(?or reverse 3 parts in English +
Chinese?
Powrie, Shawn. Chinese. Counterfactual
...subjunctive +,conditional "(if... then...)
section.
Zhu, ni, hao yunqi!!
In a word, “了” in Chinese indicates the perfect aspect （完成体）instead of the past tense（过去时）. In Chinese, tenses are indicated by time words.
And the _perfect_ aspect indicates that an action is done. So why does 我太困了 mean "I _am_ sleepy"? That state is still going on.
Emphasising just how sleepy you are, as in, I am too tired!@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx
老师，请问，一个看起来很愚蠢的问题， 但是我有所以。。。
我知道。I know it.
我知道了。Now, I Know it.
我生病了。Now, I'm ill. (before, i was ok)
对吗
The use of 了 is similar to verbal "aspect" as opposed to tense - found in the Greek and Russian languages (perfective (completed) and imperfective (not completed) aspects); 了 being more or less a marker for the perfective aspect. There is a book "Biblical Translation in Chinese and Greek: Verbal Aspect in Theory and Practice
" By Toshikazu S. Foley (447 pages) which compares meticulously the use of 了, 过 and other Chinese verb markers with Greek verbal aspect system.
Those languages are not the only ones that have aspect.
Doesn't English also have aspect? I'm pretty sure the perfect and progressive/continuous "tenses" of English are not true tenses, but aspects.
Actually, the way she describes "le" makes it seem very similar to the English perfect tense/aspect.
English has aspect!
"I eat" simple/habitual aspect, present tense
"I am eating" continuous aspect, present tense
"I have eaten" completed (perfective) aspect, present tense
"I ate" simple aspect, past tense
"I was eating" continuous aspect, past tense
"I had eaten" completed aspect, past tense
"I would eat (every day)" habitual aspect, past tense
"'Le' is one of the hardest particles" - 你说得对。
You are an amazing teacher! Thank you so much for your detailed explanation of 了👍
Don't worry too much about it.. it will come instinctively... Listen more,that's all it takes
I still have my Nintendo Donkey Kong 2 ‘game’n’watch’. I’m so happy to learn that it can also function as a time machine. Loved this lesson. Yes, these aspects of time tense logic have often seemed mysterious and almost incomprehensible. This could be a mini revolution in this aspect of my learning, thank you!
"it's October 2025 and Trump is still president" lol I nearly spit my coffee out. But seriously please God, no.
One of the best explanations of "le' I have heard. You really gave me that "aha" moment!
OMG, you explain the meaning and usage of "了" so well! The time machine concept made for a very clear explanation.
Thank you so much!! I am only a beginner in chinese, but to have this aha-moment so soon will really help me in my chinese learning journey (: 谢谢你！
Wow! Thank you for breaking down the concept of time embedded in English and Chinese grammar like this! As a non-native English speaker, I now also learned from this video why was it so hard for people from my country to learn the whole time-relative grammar in English (past/present/perfect etc etc etc..). Never thought about it before that the way you think about time and describe action in relation to time are different in each culture and language!
What about "了" in "走了!". What's differences between "走了" and "走吧".
I bet you most Chinese have never thought about 了 as a particle and its grammatical usage.
Hi! Thx for the video❤ but I’m still confused how many times can I use 了in the sentence. What if I have two words representing two different changes. Or should I only use it once with one verb?
And I’m confused with the order of 了。 why do we say 我毕业了就去你的城市。 我可以写 ”我毕业就去你的城市了”还是 ”我毕业了就去你的城市了？
3.41 in another lessons i saw that with verbs that expression feelings or thoughts don't put le, or it's just for completed actions and here for change of states can use le? Another thing is that i saw that to form negative sentences use mei without putting le or it's a rule for le when we use it for completed actions and not when we use it for change of state?
this is easy for Latin Spanish speaker.
Le is "Ya"
ya no te amo
ya lo se
lo quiero ya
ya esta (terminado)
hicistes la tarea? Si ya!
ya hice la tarea.
Estas casado?? Si ya me casé.
“我20岁就结婚了” 实在不是一个好例子，因为如果不是“20岁”而是其它没有“结婚太早” 含义的年龄，这是个应该用“是……的”的句子。这个句子如果去掉“就”，就是一个病句。学生依样画葫芦就会造出 “我三十岁结婚了”，“我爸妈二十五岁结婚了”这样的病句。
Really good! The “past tense” confusion is common when people speaking “tense languages” learn an “aspect language.” As an example, Turkish is very much an aspect language and their (very badly named) “past tense” is much more a perfective aspect, just like “le.” You could translate your “wo zhi dao le” almost exactly into the Turkish “past,” and western languages speakers are left scratching their heads. :-) I wish more Turkish teachers would explain it as clearly as you do!
Thanks for sharing that! The more we learn! :)
I wonder who it was that first said that a (sentence-final) "了 indicates a change of state".
In any case, this has gone "viral", and so many text books and teachers spout this definition.
I finally figured out that this is only true if the verb is negated with 不.
As illustrated in the example: 我父母不工作了 ("my parents don't work any more") (the situation has changed)
But without the negation, I believe a sentence-final 了 indicates the current state of an ongoing situation (NO change).
For example: 他一辈子住在香港了 ("He has lived in Hong Kong all his life") (and the situation is ongoing)
If we take away the 了, then it's not clear that the situation is ongoing. Possibly, he passed away.
Similarly, I think that 她二十岁就结婚了 means that "she was (already) married at the age of twenty".
So, that was her status at that time. It doesn't talk about when she got married, or any kind of change.
To say "she got married at the age of twenty" I think that should be something like 她二十岁那年结了婚.
Unlike the sentence-final 了, this 了 after the verb indicates the completion of an action (or change of situation).
......
With so many comments here, I'm pretty sure no one will read mine, so I'm pretty sure I won't be "burned at the stake" for expressing such "heretical" ideas. :-)
Mountaintag! Wonderful explanation !
By the way, your profile picture is not mountaintag. Is that 大鸟 ？哈哈哈...
@mountaintag Gluten tag !
To be honest in Bahasa Indonesia (my native language) we have a similar mindset of action and tenses. But when being taught about it in English my brain hurts because I need to switch mindset three times, from English to Bahasa Indonesia then to Mandarin. Hahaha
Frienzoned in a chinese class! Achievement unlocked!
Wow I’m glad you recommended us to retrain our brain when it comes to the grammar tenses. I’m a Vietnamese student and I’m learning times/days and after watching your video it occurred to me that we look at the time line as past/present/future. For example i was learning the words “last month/next month”...you’ll need to look up these words in Vietnamese. The point here is the word last reference to the past which is on the left side of the timeline and the word next is on the right side. In Vietnamese the sequence of these words are on opposite sides but the translation comes out to be understood. This got me thinking the concept of 了is totally different from English tenses. I am very intrigued with the concept 了. Thank you for the lecture!
චීන අකුරු ලස්සනයි . මම චීන භාෂාව හදාරන ආරම්භකයෙක්මි
I have spotted something in 15:01 time-stamp that is the English Language equals: dial or dials; deal or deals!
Thank you and good-bye from Sarajevo 🇧🇦!
But, in another of her learning videos téibei is actually kirby!
Muchísimas gracias por esta explicación. Además, tu inglés se entiende muy bien. Tus vídeos son realmente instructivos. Sigue así, por favor.
¿estas aprendiendo chino desde inglés????? que bien xd
@@theradiumgirl9298 Sí, los mejores cursos que encuentro online están en inglés, así que no tengo más remedio...
There is also another structure for 了: it's called the "double 了" sentence. It's used to describe an action which started in the past and is still in progress at this moment. Example: 我学了两年的汉语了 (I started to study Chinese 2 years ago and I am still studying today).
But doesn’t it mean a completion of an action?
You're teaching people the wrong thing here. I'm native Chinese and one of the meaning of Le is past tense! Le and Jiu have many meanings. The way you explain is also confusing. Anyway, these are all foreigners learning Mandarin so no need to be perfect.
I think she already explained it on the video that 了 is also been using for things that happened in the past but already finished. I am still learning mandarin so I want to know which part of it that was wrong?
To exemplify the difference of tense and aspect just thing of the following: English has a present tense, and four aspects: Simple 1) I eat; Continuous 2) I am eating; Perfect 3) I have eaten; Combined 4) I have been eating. Move this to any tense (past, future, whatever) it will still be 4 aspects. Aspect is independent from tense. Hopefully this explanation helps...
We have a similar prob in Malaysian Chinese dialects. "Lah" is also used in Malay and similar homonyms in Chinese dialects like Cantonese (广东话) or Hokkien (福建花). Depending on contexts, the tones used may change its meaning!
2 years later, I found your channel and wow you couldn't have explained Le 了 better. With that, I came to realize in one Le 了 use case, we Filipinos have a similar particle in our sentences as well (in this case it's "Na"), which similarly indicates a change of state.
我不爱你'了' Wo Bú Aì Ni 'Le'
"Di 'na' kita mahal"
(base sentence: "Di kita mahal", 我不爱你, I don't love you)
Hope I could learn more chinese in the long run. Thanks to your videos they're very helpful 💯
Also, aye 6:19 😆
I’ll probably be getting a lot of 我不愛你
I thought I understood the uses of 了. Was I ever wrong!
你的名字和我一个朋友一样😹
It was even simple my language has distinction between Perfective and Imperfective unlike English
6:12 Incoming plug for like and subscribe, in 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1...
你太好了👌💖
Much of the material here is attempting to detail perfected aspect which may happen in past, present, or future tense context. 了 is a frequent indication of an action perfected, namely, used as a past event for reference. This is called aspect and is very different to tense yet causes confusion when detailing patterns since the terms overlap.
Yeah I feel like it’s easy to understand bc it’s about perfect aspect. English does have this concept.
Many thanks from Korea. I love this lesson. 영상 너무 좋아요!
I just started learning Mandarin recently, this is probably a tad advanced for me (I understood maybe 10% of the words, probably even way less lol) but this lesson reminds me of "ya" in Spanish, and how it has a few different uses depending on context. In fact, it sometimes can be "anymore", similarly.
Any examples in Spanish of "ya"?
Good thing Cantonese has several different particles that function as 了 in it's various uses without having to differentiate. Same with 的地得, which thankfully don't all sound the same. 🤣
Thank you so much for this video. Amazing explanation. First time I actually understood 了.
It marks the Perfective Grammatical Aspect in English it doesn't have a specific markation in english it is part of Simple Past Tense together with the Imperfective Aspect and the Imperfect Aspect while the Perfect Grammatical Aspect is in the Perfect Present Tense and in my language the Perfect Preterite Tense has both Perfective and Perfect Aspect
wow you are the best!!! This video was so clear, I FINALLY get it now. I was so confused for so long lol
Also (as a native English speaker) I learned something new the other day! The grammar pattern that you speak of in this video is called Perfect Tense: Past Perfect Tense, Present Perfect Tense, and Future Perfect Tense 😊
Why am I, a Chinese watching this video?
fu**** boring
我知道了，谢谢！ Little English tip: "I _hope_ this video will give you an Aha moment" instead of "I wish..." This is pretty subtle.
"Wish" can be used with a noun phrase, like "I wish you a Merry Christmas." This is a positive sentiment, like the one you expressed.
Or, "wish" can be used with a verb in a hypothetical, like "I wish it were snowing right now," or "I wish I had studied harder," but in these cases it's generally a sentiment of disappointment. "I wish things were different".
"Wish" used with a future verb, as you've used it, sounds quite unnatural to my American ears. You could say "I wish it weren't going to rain tomorrow," which is about the future, but still hypothetical and still with the flavor of disappointment. But for a purely positive wish for the future with a verb, use "hope" instead: "I hope it will be sunny tomorrow." And hope also works with nouns, so "I hope for sun" also works.
If you want a rule of thumb, I'd use "wish" when you want to imply the wish goes unfulfilled and "hope" when you want to leave that open-ended.
Oh man, is her Time Machine real??
Will Trump be President in 2025 😂
Your explanation about completed actions sounds exactly as if you are describing perfect tenses. Actually, "perfect"as in "perfect tense" means "completed".
Ahhhh this makes so much sense!!! Thank you so much this is something that has confused me for aaages!
Great work but pls start mixing in more Chinese speaking:)))))
why did i watch the Chinese lesson and enjoy it while I am a Chinese... maybe it's because I found 了 not so simple anymore.
2:25 we have this in Spanish 😂😂😂. "Me muero de calor" o "me muero de sueño". It's an intensifier
I'm so sorry, but I'm still confused. I had a dog, means the action was completed, you don't have the dog any more so the action is completed!
[I had a dog --> the action was completed, this is an English logic]
For the present you don’t have that dog, true, but you need to take the time machine to go back, say, 10 years ago, that time you were in progress of having that dog, that’s why you don’t use了。
@@ShuoshuoChinese ok, maybe i half understand it, thanks. I'll keep trying!
Ya know, as someone who has studied linguistics, if people just explained 了 in these terms i would have got it in like 10 seconds. But no, they gotta go about explaining it like it's hella complicated, when it's just about open and closed actions, and the time marker itself just marks the point of reference. Ez.
What a great explanations. I wish you were my Teacher ! 🙏🙏🙏🙏❤
"my parents don't work anymore"
Have you tried turning them off and turning them back on again?
Please don't let your prediction for 2025 be true 😩😩😩
Very, Very good teacher. I like and.....improve a lot. Please, When to use Xue and when Xuexi? Xie xie ni!
*2025: "Omg donald trump is still president"*
I KNEW HE'D FIND A LOOPHOLE TO STAY MORE THAT TWO TERMS GOD DAMN IT
Great content! I really like the fonts, especially the handwriting like at the ends. If I might suggest sth, maybe some exercises at the end of the video (together with answers)?
Amazing. Can anyone help me with a question? Why doesn't "after I graduate I'll go to your city" translate to "我毕业后会去你的城市"? I really wanna take the time machine but "我毕业了就去你的城市" sounds like it basically means "I graduated, now I'm going to your city" which is different. Sorryyy, I'm confuuuuused.
Just a question, does “lu xing” mean “travel” or something? Thank you! 谢谢！
Well, (English is not my first language), I still don't know how "though" works though
LOL i laughed at your example of 80lbs before, but now are 90lbs. Both of those sound grossly underweight to me. ;) I’d want to know how to say -please gain some weight- in that case. ;)
Thanks so much, it helps me a lot.
However, there is a sentence I am not sure if I can use 了 or not. Could you please help me with this.
我女儿还只六十岁的时候就学中文
I think I can not say 学了 because this action did not complete at she was 6 years old. Because studying a language is long-term and repeated. Can you help me if I am right or not.
Moreover I know that there is a usage for 2 了 in 1 sentence it describes about a action in progress. But I watched repeatedly your 2 videos about this I can't find out it. So I am so confused now for this case . could you please help me ?
Shuo 你 Shuo ... i like your videos very much .. keep making videos
Extremely useful information.
By the way, a suggestion, write down the English translation of your sentences and highlight in red the English equivalent of the topic you are talking about, for example.
AFTER I graduate, I will pay you a visit.
In that case, the English speaker will know that "LE" is referring to the equivalent of "AFTER" in English (I'm talking about the idea, semantics, not a literal translation).
Your example of the time machine was awesome. Please, keep making more videos like this one!
我看了你的录像,我知道了. < Is this sentence correct?
This is brilliant, thank you so much!
And your sentence is perfect 😊
10:44 So, about Donald Trump being president in 2025... I think we can now put a "le" on that, cause the election completed his action! hehehe
What adult is 80 pounds? Hobbits?
😂
I'm so confused-
How do you know in a sentence what 了 is used as? Since 了 is used for change of state and completed action..Uh..Right?
Please don't attack me for not listening to the full video-
My brain hurts to even focus anymore ;-;
so I'd be very thankful if someone answered this question--
Even though your theory is good, i understood it and it did help, there is something that isn't clear.
In your example "I got married when i was 20", If i think from perspective of me 20 years ago (as you said, use time machine), then i was getting married and was NOT married. Action was complited only at some point of that year. I didn't understand why did you use 了 there.
By this logic both "i had a dog 20 years ago" and "i bought a dog 20 years ago" would be a completed action (lets assume that i already don't have a dog) and the ONLY situation where you wouldn't use 了 is in sentence "when i was buying a dog 20 years ago something happened."
Just to make it clear, I understand why 了 used with graduation (because you mentioned something that you will do after you graduate and that implies completing the graduation) but first example is still mysterious.
After watching this video a second time, I had my "a ha" moment and I was so happy 😂
了 is almost identical to แล้ว in Thai. (I think it is even cognate) so it’s really intuitive for me to understand the concept.
how about the differences between "V了O", "VO了", and "V了O了" (all of them has the same meaning, to indicate that an act has been completed)? i still find it hard to put 了 correctly. ive been trying to solve this by searching on google and asking some of my friends, but yea i still dont understand. i hope this question can be seen. 多谢
Thanks a lot for the perfect explanation, would you please tell me for example in this sentence, what is the reason for using 了。
天阴了。
Is it for emphasis, I saw it in a textbook,
After watching the video I said to myself "For a while, I was confused about things in the future being considered "completed", since there is no way we could know for a fact that they will happen. But I guess it makes sense. After all, the Earth taking a year to orbit the sun is going to have happened". And then I realised what I just said. "Going to have happened". I was referring to something in the future as if it had happened in the past.
Tense is very strange! Even in English.
So it has some common linguistic space with Spanish “ya” and English “got”
Although I was born, raised and was educated in the United States, learning Chinese has made me more aware of the “mechanics” of the English language (and Spanish). Therefore, although I know of the importance of thinking in the language you are learning, now I know that the sooner I understand the mechanics/grammar, the sooner I will grasp the true meaning and feeling of the language. Thank you for your hard work 😊
This hepls me better understand le. Using some of your examples, I tested google translate and they didn't always get it right.
How do I contact you directly and not in public? Because I not able to travel back to China or HK I may want to come to Thailand for lessons.
After thinking a while,了 is not really past tence，more like perfect tense because the word 了 does show us the imformation that something had been done or has just been done.
The point of view from this video is reasonable.
Did you eat breakfast this morning？
I did. 我吃过了 so the word 了 easily makes people think it is past tence. It shows us the imformation but it is not really belong to past tence.
“Now they are 80 pounds, still not fat”
In the West, that is one woman’s leg.
a confusing exception: 我學了四年了 means "I have been studying for 4 years" (and am still studying). Why does the 2nd 'le' add a meaning of continuation? 我學了四年 means "I studied for 4 years" (and am not studying anymore). 但是我自己學中文才六個月，所以我可能寫錯了。
hey loashi i am so happy that i saw your video i am learning chines in china still can not open my mouth to speak a good sentence ..but right now i understand some of the stuff because of your video thanks and keep the video coming ,,,i am so going to watch all the video like your word u need to format your English brain and welcome chinese language in it
teacher i find different to understand what Chinese people are speaking when they speak it too fast, I can understand Chinese only by reading any advice for me
This video is good but the sentences are written to small, I can't see to read...at the end of the video can't read anything
Regarding charge of “state 了” how long after is the change of state acknowledged?
I got married when I was 20. But you first turned 20 and only then got married! So why 了？I understand if you got married when you were 19 and you say: When I was 20, I was (already) married.
So jiu indicates that something happens early, so this must refer to a time nearer your 20th birthday, when you say about taking the time machine back it must stay there, either when you are 20, because this time will last a year or 1988 to wait for you to be born, you mentioned that using Le at the end emphasised the getting married process and it comes after the object, yet Le at the end of a sentence also indicates a completed action, so as well as used for a completed action it's also used for emphasis.