New words and language points

New words

喂 wèi It’s a word for greeting on the phone. It means hello, hey.

Pay attention! Sometimes it may sound impolite in face-to-face communication.

也 yě also, too.

也 appear in a sentence before the predicate in Chinese.

E.g. 我爱吃水果。李月也爱吃水果。

学习 xuéxí to learn or to study.

Sometimes we can say 学 to mean the same. It goes before some nouns or even verbs.

For example, 学习汉语 or 学汉语

大卫 Dàwèi David

Language points

“在……呢”. It is used to indicate an action in progress. You can put a verb between “在” and “呢”.

For example:

你在做什么呢？What are you doing?

我在打电话呢。I am making a phone call.

“在” or “呢” can be used independently for short.

Like 我在打电话。/ 我打电话呢。

The negative form of this sentence structure is to place 没 before 在, and without 呢 at the end of the sentence.

我在看电视呢。I am watching TV.

我没在看电视。I am not watching TV.

在can sometimes be omitted, too. 没 can be used alone to imply negative form of a sentence in present continuous tense. Like 我没看电视。