It’s probably important I address this now before we move on any further.

Structuring a sentence, in its basic form, in Chinese is relatively easy. Much more so when compared to English. Over the course of the few lessons we’ve covered, we examined how words are put into a sentence and what those sentences turn out to be.

¹我是王明。
I am Wangming.

²她是学生。
She is a student.

These are two simple sentences and they exemplify the basic sentence structure. A subject, a verb and an object, in that order, makes the basic Chinese sentence.

我 (subject) + 是 (verb) 王明 (object)。
I (subject) + am (verb) + Wangming (object).

I, the subject, am doing the action “am” or “is”, two verbs expressing existence, to the object Wangming.

她 (subject) + 是 (verb) + 学生(object)。
She (subject) + is (verb) + student (object).

This sentence structure simply shows that a subject must be doing something to the object. That is the basic sentence. Take these for example.

他是老师。
你是我的朋友。
这是我的书。
那个人是我的爸爸。

These are all grammatically correct. After a couple of other lessons, I’m sure you’ll be able to hold some pretty basic conversations.