Mandarin Aspect Particles "le" and "guo" | Ask A Chinese Teacher #20 | Columbus School of Chinese

Learn more about the Columbus School of Chinese and our available online classes: columbusschoolo...
Donald Newman explains the most common uses of aspect particles "le" and "guo" in episode #20 of the series "Ask A Chinese Teacher."
For more free resources, follow Columbus School of Chinese on Facebook: / columbusschoolofchinese1
ABOUT CSC
The Columbus School of Chinese (CSC) is an Ohio-based educational organization that offers distance, individual and classroom Mandarin language instruction, as well as business, educational and cultural consulting services. Our focus is developing speaking, listening, reading and writing skills for learners of all ages and levels.

[@smatlanta1]

I am worrying about myself. I find your lessons to be actually interesting! 😀

[@merlinatanoto1329]

this is very useful laoshi

[@lucialee1232]

Thank you this really helped

[@ali_7622]

非常感谢 老师！！

[@columbusschoolofchinese9385]

不客气！

[@abermin]

Love your shirt.

[@babakbagheri2243]

Nihao Laoshi
I've just found your channel. I've been studying Chinese for a only few months.
My question is what if you want to express both your experience and completion of an action. For example how do you translate the following conversation:
Q: Have you ever been to China?
A: Yes, I've been there twice (or I travelled to China twice) in 2010 and 2012.

[@columbusschoolofchinese9385]

Hello Babak, thanks for watching. Here's one simple way to ask and answer that -- Q: nǐ qùguo zhōngguó ma? A: qùguo, wǒ qùguo liǎngcì, 2010nián hé 2012nián.

[@babakbagheri2243]

@@columbusschoolofchinese9385
Thanks!

[@mukeshsekar81]

Fei chang gan xie.. wo dong le..

[@columbusschoolofchinese9385]

Bu ke qi!

[@mountaintag]

The example 他去过中国 ("He has been to China") is interesting in another sense too. Although 去过 literally means "has gone", we should not translate this sentence as "He has gone to China". If we wanted to say this, that would be 他去了中国. So 去过 means "has been" (somewhere), and 去了 means "has gone" (somewhere).
A beginner might want to translate "I have been to China" by using 在 (which means "to be somewhere"), but this is not a good approach. I suppose we could say 我曾经在中国 (which means "at one time I was in China") but this is not a natural way to say this.