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In this first lesson we will learn the pronouns, the verb "to be", and the occupations "student", "teacher", and "businessperson".
After all, aren't we a little bit of all three?
The simple sentence pattern of pronoun + be + complement is a a quick and easy way to convey information about people - "He is an American", "They are students", "She is my coworker" etc.
Once you get in the basic form, it's simply a matter of plugging in additional vocabulary (which we will do in later lessons).
1.01 Pronouns
我
Wǒ
I
你
Nǐ
You
您
Nín
You
(respected)
他
Tā
He 她
Tā
She
它
Tā
It
你们
Nǐmen
You all
我们
Wǒmen
We
他们
Tāmen
They
Notes:
He and she have the same pronunciation in Mandarin, tā; in the written language they are differentiated by their characters, 他 for he and 她 for she.
To make the plural of any pronoun just add 们 men to the singular form of the pronoun. Please note that the distinction between plural and singular is not quite as important in Chinese, often the plural will simply be implied by the context.
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