Language1 and Language2/Contrastive grammar

ENGLISH AND CHINESE/CONTRASTIVE LANGUAGE

DIFFERENCES:

Alphabets :

Chinese language do not have alphabets but uses logographic symbols for its writing. In logographic system, symbols represent the word themselves and words are not made up of alphabetical system like English.

Vowels and consonants :

English has more usage of vowels than Chinese which results in faulty pronunciations. Examples : ship /sheep or it/eat.

In Chinese, there are 24 vowel and 21 consonants while in English the number is much less.

Verb :

In English much information is carried by the use of auxiliaries and by verb inflections: is/are/were, eat/eats/ate/eaten, etc. Chinese, on the other hand, is an uninflected language and conveys meaning through word order, adverbials or shared understanding of the context.

Modal verbs: English language uses modal verbs while in Chinese no modal verbs are used. This can result in them seeming peremptory when making requests, suggestions, etc.

Use of phrasal verbs: English, a number of short verbs combine with adverbs and preposition to form phrasal verbs which are commonly used in English. But in Chinese there is no use of phrasal verbs. Examples take on, give up etc. are not used in Chinese language.

To be verb'does not exist in Chinese :n Chinese, TO BE verb is not used unlike in English. Examples : In Chinese, the sentence would go like this: I go, I will happy or We will always together

Word Order:

Negation English i a bit funny about negation =. It doesn’t like negating main verbs, so if there isn’t an auxiliary verb it will insert one and negate that. In Mandarin you can just negate the main verb Examples: 我不喜欢他。 Wǒ bù xǐhuan tā. I don’t like him. Here don't is a negation.

Adverbial manner :Words that add information about the verb such as time, manner and place are known as adverbials. In Mandarin these nearly always come before the verb. This is different to English which tends to put them all over the place depending on the situation.

Another difference between the two languages is that Chinese has a specific order for this extra information: time first, then manner and then place. This sequence is a general rule. Examples : 我明天要去上海 Wǒ míngtiān yào qù shànghǎi. Here this sentence means : I tomorrow will go to Shangai.

A typical word order to be followed unlike in English : This is a general word order for Mandarin that works most of the time. Note that Mandarin sentences are not always exactly like this, especially due to Mandarin being topic-prominent. Adjectives could be inserted before the subject and object: Sbj + Tme + Mnr + Plc + Neg + Aux + Vrb + Cmp + Obj (subject, adverbials, negative, auxiliary verb, verb, complement, object).

An important rule In Chinese apart from word order the following makes useful guidelines - " Modifies preceed what they modify" while there is no such rule in English.

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Tenses:

Chinese language gives importance to aspect not tense : English verbs express aspect and tense. Consider the difference between “I ate”, “I was eating” and “I have eaten”. They are all past tense, but the aspect in each one is different. There are different levels of completeness. This is what aspect is about.

Mandarin tends to just express aspect. The main way it does this is with the aspect particle 了 (le). 了 grammar is pretty difficult, but just remember that it’s about aspect and not tense. 了 can appear in sentences about the past, present and future.

No expression of time in Chinese verbs:In Chinese expressions are done with temporal adverbs. 'He future travel.' 'I tomorrow shop.' The Chinese do not talk in the present about the future being in the past, for e.g.: 'By Friday I will have gone...'.

Active and Passive voice :

Chinese language usually uses active voice while in English, passive voice is commonly used. Examples : English - It is always stressed. ......... Chinese - People always stressed......

Pronoun:

Use of pronoun: Use of pronoun is common in English but Chinese people usually use noun.

Stress and notation pattern difference :There is a lot of difference in stess and notation pattern.

Singular/Plural and nouns:

Nouns can be post modified in English language but there is no post modifications of noun in Chinese.

In Chinese plural forms are generally similar to singular. But sometimes plural marker is used to denote plural words - 们.

Some other major Differences:

No nominative cases in Chinese : In Chinese, for example, I and me goes the same

Similarly 'he' and 'him' also goes the same.

Chinese language requires classifiers : In Chinese language, classifiers are required to be counted. So when we have to specify a Amount of a countable noun classifiers have to be used while English does not use any classifiers.

Order of questioning: Chinese question are asked like ' you say what? ' while in English the same question will be asked like 'What did you say?'

Usage of 的 to attach qualities to things : In Chinese the above symbol is used to attach qualities to the things. Examples : 那是小李的书。 那是小李的书。Nà shì Xiǎolǐ de shū. That is Xiaoli’s book.

Chinese- a topic prominent language : Chinese is topic-prominent as it often prefers to put the topic first, not the subject. So a speaker might say “作业我已经做完了”, literally “homework I’ve already done”. While English is a subject prominent language.

Preference to the tone:

Chinese language is a tone languge, unlike English. This means that it uses pitch for identifying the meaning of words.