ba-construction - source

Full transcript of ba-construction. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ErJ7H3U-s

There’s a word in Chinese that has no direct equivalent in English. Native speakers use it roughly every two to three minutes, but textbooks don’t teach it until chapter 15. It’s the single word that unlocks native level Chinese. I’m Sheldon and my team and I at Cantonese Mandarin have helped over 600 heritage Cantonese speakers improve their Cantonese while also learning Mandarin. And this word is one of the biggest walls we see [music] students get stuck with. It’s hard to understand, but once you actually get it, the world of Chinese really opens up. But before we understand how this word actually works, we need to first understand something more basic, which is how do sentences work in English versus Chinese? See, in English, a sentence is basically just three [music] things, right? A subject, verb, and object. Or, said more simply, who’s doing something, what they’re doing, and what they’re doing it to. Think of it like a cameraman following an actor in a movie. I eat rice. The camera follows the actor. I eat rice. In this case, the subject or the doer is I, the verb or the action is eat, and the object or the thing that action is being done to is rice. Now, here’s the good news. Chinese works the exact same way. In Mandarin, [music] 我 吃 飯, I eat rice. In Cantonese, 我 食 飯, I [music] eat rice. 我, wo, is I. 食, chi, is eat. And then, 飯, fan, is rice. You got doer, action, thing. Same [music] order. Another example, 她 看 書, keoi taai syu. Keoi, ta, she. 看, taai, looks. [music] And then, 書, syu, read a book. Exactly the same in both Cantonese Mandarin. The reason why beginners get comfortable fast is because the basic word order feels just like English. The camera follows the actor. Simply, you could probably build a hundred sentences right now without learning any new grammar just by following this one structure. But the thing is that real Chinese doesn’t stay this simple because the simple pattern actually breaks in real life. Because real life isn’t I eat rice. Real life is I finish the rice. I put the book on the table. Notice what’s different. I’m not talking talk past tense. Every single one of these has a result. Something happened to the object. Right? The rice didn’t just get eaten, it got finished. The book didn’t just exist, it ended up on the table. The clothes didn’t just get washed, they became clean. Okay? In real life, we don’t just do things. We do things and something changes because of it. Now, in English, no problem, right? You just slap the result in the end. I ate the rice up. I broke the glass to pieces. She washed the clothes clean. Done. But in Chinese, try to keep the same word order and things fall apart. For example, I put the book on the table. Wo fang shu zai zhuo zi shang. Wo fang shu hai toi dou. Wo Wo is I. Fang Fang means to place. Shu Shu means book. Hai zai means on. Then toi or zhuo zi is basically a table and then shang or dou basically means like on it. So, wo fang shu zai zhuo zi shang. Wo fang shu hai toi dou. I put the book on the table. That sounds like it’s right, right? Thing about the sentence is, it’s technically not wrong, but it’s awkward. A native speaker would actually rarely say it like this. Let’s look at another example. She washed the clothes clean. In Mandarin, if we follow that same structure, ta xi gan jing yi fu le. Ke yi sai gon zang sam le. Now, a bit less awkward in Cantonese, but still slightly awkward in Mandarin. It may not sound awkward to you if you’re new to Chinese, but to a native speaker, they wouldn’t actually phrase it like this. Now, in this one, ke yi ta means she. Sai xi means to wash. Gon zang gan jing means clean. Yi fu sam means clothes. And then le basically a state marker, a change of state, which we have in other videos. Now, once again, it’s not like it’s crazy awkward, but it may not sound awkward, especially if you’re new to Chinese. But to a native speaker, they wouldn’t really say it like this most of the time. And the reason why is because the camera, if you remember the camera analogy, has been following the actor this whole time. I do think. But the most important part of this scene isn’t what the actor or the subject does. It’s actually what happens to the object. The rice got finished. The book ended up on the table. The camera, in Chinese, needs to shift focus. And that’s how Chinese works. Because this is where Chinese does something that you won’t find in English or pretty much most European languages, which is the fact that Chinese has a dedicated word, one single word whose entire job is to say focus on the object because I’m about to tell you what happened to it. Now, this word originally meant to grasp or to hold. And the way we think about it is almost think of it like you’re grabbing the object and telling the listener what you did with it. Okay, that’s how we think about it in this case. And that’s how most Chinese works. Now, linguists took this seriously enough to give it a formal name back in 1943, which is chǔzhìshì or chǔzhìshì in Mandarin, which means the disposal form because this object gets disposed of or technically dealt with or handled. And the word that is responsible for the disposal form, the word that makes beginner Chinese sound native, that word is bǎ like a sheep, bǎ. Spelled b a with a falling rising tone, tone three, bǎ. Instead of fighting with word order when results matter, basically the way bǎ works is it rearranges the entire sentence. It says, “The next thing I mention, that’s going to be the object, and I’ll tell you what happened to it.” So, here’s the formula, and I call it basically, you know, object spotlight. It goes subject bǎ object plus verb plus results. Now, this is formally called bǎ zì jù, the bǎ sentence structure. And you might also hear it called the disposal form, which we already mentioned. Okay? But basically, for example, I bǎ the rice eat finished. So, in Mandarin, wǒ bǎ fàn chī wán le. I bǎ the rice eat finished. In Cantonese, ngóh jeung faahn sik yún la. So, ngóh wo is I, jeung or bǎ basically means that’s the special word we have. Faahn faahn Basically means rice. Then sek yun basically means [music] to finish eating. Then la la is basically just a change of state. So, I ba the rice eat finished. Okay? So, if you want to translate this directly to English, the easiest way to interpret this is I took the rice and I finished it. So, we can think of ba in that way as saying I took X and did something to it. Without ba, okay, the sentence is flat. Okay? It just kind of reports like the eating rice happened. But with ba, what we do is we make the rice the star of the sentence. You tell the listener basically the rice is dealt with, okay? It’s gone, right? And that is the camera shift. Okay? That’s what we do with ba. It’s the director yelling cut. Okay? Cut the scene. Okay? We don’t really care about the subject anymore. Focus on the object, on the rice, and show me what happened to it. And this is how Chinese generally handles these. Okay? Chinese generally doesn’t focus on the doer as much when we have something like this. Okay? We focus on what happened to the thing itself. So, it’s not I ate the rice, it’s I took the rice and I ate it. It’s not I smashed this bowl thing, it’s I took this bowl thing and smashed it. That’s the difference. Chinese very commonly will use this structure as opposed to just a pure like I smashed this bowl. Now, the key with this structure is that there must be a result. In this case, wan la or yun la indicates it’s finished, right? I finished the rice. Without the result, the sentence breaks because if nothing happens to the object, well, then there’s no reason to focus on the object in the first place, right? There’s no reason to use the ba structure. And we’ll get more into that later. So, now, what counts as a result? Things like wan, okay, yun, finished. Kai, hoi, open. Wan cheng, gan jing, okay, clean or sui or soy, broken. Or, you know, putting on the table. Zai zhuo zi shang, hai toi dou, putting it on the table. Those are all results. And we go into results in another video. Now, let’s go back and fix the sentence from before, okay, the one that sounded a little bit weird. So, I put the book on the table. In Mandarin, what we had originally was wo fang shu zai zhuo zi shang or wo fang shu hai toi shang mian. Now, the way we’d more commonly say it is not I put the book on the table, but I took the book and put on the table. Wo ba shu fang zai zhuo zi shang. Ngor jeung boon shu fang hai toi saam min. So, ngor wo I, jeung ba that’s a special word here where it does is we took the book. Boon shu or shu basically means the book. Fang fang basically means to place it. And then zai hai means on. And then zhuo zi or toi basically means the table. And then saam min or shang basically means on the table. So, remember I took the book and placed on table. Now, there are cases where you absolutely cannot use ba. And and we’ll get to that. But, another thing to notice here ba in Mandarin, jeung in Cantonese. Same position, [music] same job, same everything. So, if you’re a Cantonese speaker, this is just jeung. That’s it. If you know how to use jeung in Cantonese, just replace your jeung with ba in Mandarin. Video over for you. Okay, that’s it. Well, not quite. Okay, there is a caveat and we’ll get to that. We actually have a student, by the way, uh Didi, who was stuck on this concept for a long time.

Videos explaining in English, none of it made sense. And then I asked you, and you’re like, “Oh, just replace it with jeung or whatever.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh!” Instant unlock. Instant instant unlock. But, the minute we showed her what ba maps to in Cantonese, which is just jeung, it clicked instantly. And so, if you’re a Cantonese speaker, this video is either an instant click for you or it’s actually a two-in-one lesson. Either way, we got you covered, right? We also have a free masterclass that helps Cantonese speakers learn Mandarin faster while also improving their Cantonese. It works even if you can’t read or write a single word of Chinese. As long as you can speak even a little bit, you can tell, right? Because as you can see from this video, if you speak even an inkling of Cantonese, Mandarin just it just comes easier. And so, this is my gift to you. So, we have a link down below, description box. Okay, my gift to you. So, now you have the formula. Let me actually show you what this actually looks like in practice. We’ll use the same base formula of the subject plus ba plus object plus verb plus result with examples of kind of increasing complexity that natives use every single day. And I’m I’m here in Shanghai. Trust me, natives use it every single day. One of the most popular is in a command. Okay, these are our favorites from some of our students because they want to learn Mandarin to practice with their kids. So, obviously uh with kids you got to have commands, right? So, for example, close the door. [snorts] Without ba, it’s just guan men. Now, here it works for a quick shut the door, but there’s no result, no direction. With ba becomes ba men guan shang. In Cantonese, jeung mou shang mai. So, jeung ba means take the door and close it. Puts a lot more emphasis on the result of the door being closed. So, the difference here is just guan men or shang mou, this means close the door, but when we say ba men guan shang, okay, that means make sure that door achieves the result of being closed. It’s like it makes sure the door is closed. Okay, it’s a lot more commandy. Make sure it achieves the result of being closed. So, jeung ba basically means take it. That’s the analogy here, that’s the special word here. Mou men, door, and then uh guan in Mandarin or guan in Cantonese or shang are the word that means to close, and then mai. Shang is basically the result complement. Now, note by the way, for all the Cantonese versions here that you’re going to see in the next coming section, they’re not wrong, but some might sound more formal than how people actually talk. Okay, but I want to show you the Cantonese equivalent. That’s why I’m showing it to you. And that is one of the caveats that I mentioned earlier, but we’ll get to that later, okay? Just for now, just accept that. Next one, in Mandarin, ba chuang hu da kai, so open the window. Jeung chuang da hoi. Okay, so if it’s just da hoi chuang or da hoi chuang, that’s just open window, but this is make sure the window achieves the result of being open. So, take the window and open it. So, jeung ba means take it. Okay, chuang hu chuang basically means window. Uh da hoi da kai means open it. Ba la ji yung diu. In Cantonese, jeung laap sap diu jo hoi. Jeung ba, take it. Laap sap la ji, garbage. And then diu jo hoi, diu is basically the result. So let’s take the trash and throw it out. Throw out the trash means basically like take the trash and throw it out. Okay, it’s a command. It’s different. Here’s another example. Turn the TV off. Turn the TV So here means basically take it. TV Okay, it’s a TV. Turn off or turn off close and then turn off or turn off. And that’s just the result. Turn the TV off. Okay, and turn off or or turn off is basically the result here. One more example in Mandarin. Put your phone down. In Cantonese, put your phone down. So means basically take it. [music] When I say take it, I don’t mean like literally take it, but that’s just the analogy of what we’re using. I took the phone and I put it down. It’s not saying like this. It just means make sure the phone achieves the result of being put down. That’s what it’s saying. So put your phone down. Put your phone down. Okay, so means like take it. Okay, that’s the focus on the object. Okay, phone phone phone means to put it down. And then or put it down is basically the result of being put down. And then another one, give your homework to the teacher. In Cantonese, give your homework to the teacher. So means to basically to take it. Your your homework homework means means to basically give to hand over to the teacher teacher. So those are commands. Now let’s look at statements. She cleaned the room spotless. She cleaned the room spotless. She cleaned the room spotless. She she That’s the word here. She cleaned the room basically means the room. She cleaned the room means to clean it. And then clean basically means clean. She took the room and she cleaned it to the result of being clean. Now, this one over here is a key one because this doesn’t work without ba actually here. So, here’s an example is I forgot the keys at home. Wo wang le yao shi zai jia li. In Cantonese, ngo mong gei jo so si hai ok do. Now, this structure sounds really unnatural in Chinese, okay? A native speaker wouldn’t say it this way, but they’d [music] use the ba. Wo ba yao shi wang zai jia li le. In Cantonese, ngo jeung so si lau jo hai ok. So, wo is ngo, which means I, ba and jeung, that means that’s basically the special particle that we’re talking about here. Yep. In Mandarin for key, they use yao shi. In Cantonese, we use so si. Okay? Just different words. Now, to see if we forgot something somewhere, normally in Cantonese, we say we left it somewhere. Lau jo hai ok. So, lau means to leave it, right? Lau jo hai ok means left it at home. In Mandarin, normally we say we forgot it. So, wang zai jia li le. So, wang means to forget. Lau means you left it. Zai hai ok, that means at, and then ok, jia li means at home. Okay? And then the le and the jo are as a complete action marker. So, I left the keys at home. So, these Cantonese expressions we have here, they’re all technically correct, but like I mentioned, right? Some sound not as natural, some sound a bit stiff, [music] and that’s the caveat that we’re going to get to. I’m showing you over here the exact Cantonese equivalent so you can kind of see the structure in the same light, but everyday Cantonese you might not express the same way. But, we’ll get to that. Also use it for requests. Qing ni ba shu fang zai zhuo zi shang. In Cantonese, ng goi nei jeung bun shu fong hai toi shang min. Ng goi, qing means please, and the rest, I mean, we’ve already covered this example like 50 times. Um so, yeah, we’re not going to [laughter] go into that one again. And then, very commonly as well as a question, okay? In Mandarin, ni ba zuo ye zuo wan le ma? In Cantonese, nei jeung gung fo jo yun mei ya? So, Nei, ni, you, ba, jeung, a special word here, jo ye or gong fo. Those are just two different ways to say homework. You can say jo yip in Cantonese as well. You can say gong ker in Mandarin as well. Chinese has a million ways to say things. It’s one of the most annoying things about the language, but that’s just how it is. Jo ying, jo wan, this means to finish. Then la ma basically means like yet. Okay, and then in Cantonese, mei ya. So literally saying like, did you take your homework and actually finish it? Okay, did your homework achieve the result of being finished? Now here’s the thing, in many of these cases, it would be weird. Some of them you can not use ba, some of you you would use ba. Um commands about handling things, normally ba is the default. Complex results, like for example, clean, spotless, smashed to pieces, where we’re really emphasizing the results, ba is how you naturally say it like I said, right? These aren’t like it’s not it’s not an optional upgrade. Okay, this is how the language actually works. This is how native speakers express it, and so this is why you have to learn this structure. Because like I said, you could say wo da sui le bei zi, or you could, but normally you would say wo ba bei zi da sui le. Like Chinese people just love to emphasize the results of what happened rather than the person itself. One of the common mistakes that people make is the moment they learn ba, they put it everywhere, which is actually worse than not using it at all, because it’s like discovering salt and dumping on ice cream. Actually, that’s kind of good. No, it’s like discovering it’s like discovering Nutella and putting it on everything, okay? People do that. Because there was a rule, okay? And that rule is, did something happen to the object? Did it move? Did it change? Did it break? Did it get finished? Did it get cleaned? If yes, then use the ba. Okay, if nothing happened to it, regular word order is fine. Because here’s the one rule that is very important, okay? The verb should not stand alone after ba. Okay, you can’t just say wo ba fan chi, you can’t say that. Wo jeung fan sik, that’s incomplete. I took the rice ate. Wo ba fan chi wan, there’s a result [music] afterwards. Wo jeung fan sik yun, wo jeung fan sik sai, there’s different there’s a result there. And so it’s like we’re about to tell the listener what happened to this thing, and so you have to deliver. So that’s a very important thing. Now we have another video on results, so I’m not going to get too much into it here, but the main thing is just in English, all verbs have a result associated with it, which means that I open the door implies that I complete the action of opening it and the door was opened, right? In Chinese, it’s not always the same. In Chinese, you need a result afterwards. You can watch this video over here if you don’t understand that, but it’s very important to understand that aspect of results in Chinese. But yeah, bottom line, there must be a result attached, finished, cleaned, placed, somewhere, something. Something happened to it that has to be in there for us to use the ba framework. Now, before we get into the Cantonese caveat, one more thing. Let’s be real. Okay, learning ba is not going to make you fluent. Okay, it doesn’t replace vocabulary, it doesn’t fix your tones. What it does is it fixes the skeleton of your sentences. Because without that skeleton, everything else you build on top sounds off. It’s like learning to drive, but then nobody told you about the steering wheel, right? Like sure you can press the gas and brake, but you can’t actually go anywhere useful. Okay, so that’s why you need the skeleton in place. Let’s get into the caveat for Cantonese speakers. [music] See, this phrasing, this ba construction, is a lot more common in Mandarin than in Cantonese. We still use it during Cantonese, but not nearly to the same extent. Can be used the same way, but not to the same extent. Cantonese speakers will often just restructure the whole sentence to actually avoid it. Let’s take some of the examples earlier and see how most Cantonese speakers would actually say them. So, for example, close the door. Ba men guan shang in Mandarin. Everyday Cantonese would just be san mai dou mun or guan mai dou mun. Just flip the order, done. In Mandarin, ba la ji yong diao. In Cantonese, you could say zheung laap saap deu zheuk hui. Or what we’d actually say is probably something more like uh deu zheuk di laap saap hui. Put down the phone. Ba shou ji fang xia. In Cantonese, you probably say fong dai bou shou ji la. In Mandarin, ta ba fang jian da sao gan jing le. In Cantonese, we’d probably say keui zaap hou sai gan fong. It’s completely different, but has the same meaning. And so, the pattern here is like Cantonese has more flexible word order because it has more particles like zheuk, mai, sai that carry the result meaning naturally. And so, zheuk becomes optional, whereas Mandarin absolutely needs that ba. But this is important is there are times when Cantonese speakers naturally use zheuk. Okay, it’s not a dead word. You’ll hear it in You’ll hear it very commonly in commands of authority, especially from parents. Your mom saying, you know, put your stuff away. Okay, that’s [music] jung. It’s it’s firm. Okay, it firm those the object and adds a do it now directness. Okay, and this is actually where jung lives most naturally in everyday Cantonese in kind of like imperatives, like commands kind of thing. It’s also very common in storytelling. When you recount something dramatic, he took the letter and ripped it. That jung basically adds a lot of weight to that narrative. So, the main thing is just Cantonese [music] has jung. We use it the same way in Mandarin, but we don’t need it for everyday descriptions the way Mandarin needs it. And so, that’s why if you’re learning Mandarin as a Cantonese speaker, that ba might feel weird at first. Not because the concept is foreign, but because you’re being asked to use it in places where Cantonese would typically just restructure it, right? But in Mandarin, we have to use that ba. It’s the default. And this is important because in Mandarin, native children typically learn ba by like the age of three or four. And it’s because of the fact that it’s not a school thing. It’s just it’s used constantly by people around them. It’s literally everyday concepts that textbooks teach way too late. That’s the main thing. Now, one more thing to remember is just remember the took shortcut works, but it’s the best case for English, but it’s not exactly take, okay? Anyway, guys, I hope that was helpful for you guys. Uh click here if you’re a Cantonese speaker who wants to learn Mandarin, and otherwise, click here for a video that YouTube thinks you’ll love. Until next time, joy geen, zoi geen.