Name
Section
8.77 Major Moods 3: Mandarin Chinese
The following sentences illustrate the form that the major moods take in Mandarin
Chinese. Analyze the sentences, and answer questions A-D.
Chinese is a tone language; that is, each word is uttered at a characteristic pitch
level or with a characteristic pitch change. The tones are indicated with diacritic
marks over the vowels. The diacritic - over a vowel indicates a high tone; the
diacritic ' indicates a rising tone; the diacritic indicates a falling-rising tone; the
diacritic ' indicates a falling tone.
Mandarin Chinese sentence English gloss
- 4i!L@%fiO
Tg shi jiaoyuan. "He is a teacher." - ($3) %=B!
(Ni) miii shti! "Buy the books!" - i$mtk?
Ni yao shkn-mo? "What do you want?"
4- 4&6F!J%E%o
TB bu dao MCi-guo lai. "He is not coming to America."
5- Z%+%E$?
Wang-Xisnsheng 1ai ma? "Is Mr. Wang coming?"
- z%*%o
Wang-XiBnsheng lai. "Mr. Wang is coming." - $%G+q?
Ni ybu shii ma? "Do you have any books?" - i-*%%?
Shei mai bi?
9- %G#o
W6 ybu sha.
"Who sells pens?"
"I have books."
- ($3) B4&m!
(Ni) kin tg-men! "Look at them!" - &wtk?
Zhe shi shen-mo? "What is this?"