Thirty years later the entire class would laugh about it over drinks, or most of them would anyway. For his part, Zhang Hua would simply get a far-away look in his eye whenever his mind travelled back to those five days he had spent huddled for shelter in a moss-covered hollow after his teacher and classmates had driven back to the city oblivious to the significance of the empty seat in the back of the bus.Learning Chinese? By now you've learned that Chinese people like to answer questions by repeating the verb used to ask them in either the affirmative or negative form. But did you know there are some situations in which this rule isn't quite so reliable? This podcast covers one of these cases, in which the common verb 是 is - much like Zhang Hua in our dialogue - strangely absent from its usual place.
murrayjames
said on June 27, 2012
Nice lesson!7'42" - 他不是把车漆chong红色的了吗？Is it 漆成红色? That makes more sense, but I hear chong2, not cheng2.
Echo
said on June 27, 2012
@murrayjames,It's 成 :)--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
pefferie
said on June 30, 2012
非常有趣的语法点。我们终于听到Brendan说中文了！我很喜欢在最后的这些课你们用中文比较多。
jaq.james
said on October 3, 2016
I’m very thankful for this lesson because the uses of 不是 and 没有 still confuse me (as indicated by the previous question I just left on your site today). I just want to state my understanding of the uses of the two words and if you could confirm whether or not I’m right, that would be very helpful. So 不是 is used in questions that are seeking confirmation about another verb in the question, e.g. 喜欢 or 在, and these types of questions where 不是 is used are weren’t/wasn’t/haven’t/hadn't /didn’t/don’t/isn’t. If the answer is that, in relation to the second verb, e.g. 在，the verb is not of a lasting quality in the context of the question, then the answer is 没有, and if it is a lasting quality, then the answer is 不是.Is this right? If I am, then this probably answers my previous question I left today on the site about 不是喜欢。。。
Elementary
said on October 4, 2016
jaq.james,I tried to answer your question in that other thread, and hope it is helpful as I don't really understand your explanation here. The basic rule is that 是 must be preceded by a noun phrase and followed by a noun phrase. 不是 must also be preceded by a noun phrase and followed by a noun phrase.There are exceptions to this rule which involve colloquial speech and "nominalization" (changing what seem like verb phrases into noun phrases in sneaky ways), but if you are getting confused you can ignore them. We have a few lessons on the site which explains this, and you are going to run into them soon enough.Generally, it's also a good idea to resist the temptation to generalize about Chinese grammar based on how we translate sentences into English. This is a bad idea first because there are often many correct ways to translate the same Chinese sentence into English, but also because Chinese grammar does not have a one-to-one correspondence with the rules of English grammar. As a very brief case in point, once you realize that 是 is NOT the verb "to be" but rather an equals sign that connects two noun phrases, you will start to notice that there are many situations in which other Chinese verbs are translated into English using the verb "to be" but 是 cannot be used as would be ungrammatical (i.e. 你那儿有我的书吗? "Is my book over there?" / 他很冷 "He is cold", etc.)
jaq.james
said on October 4, 2016
Thanks for the thorough explanation. I think you have hit some key points that are tripping me up, i.e. colloquialisms and nominalisations, and my struggle to ween myself off direct English grammar translations. I will keep this in mind. I'm looking forward to reaching more lessons on this grammar point. I don't mean to 拍马屁，but I'm just so happy I found PopUp Chinese! Each of your lessons are so clever and humorous, and are focused on teaching key grammar points within theme-based lessons. It's perfect! I just wonder why you don't have an "about me" profile page? I would love to get to know more about Brendan, Echo, David and Grace and see what they look like.
