“How often do you visit your parents?”
It seems like a simple sentence, but not a lot of students can translate it in to Chinese correctly.
Why you guys can’t do it? Because in Chinese we don’t have a question word for “ how often ”. This is what we are going to learn today: THE COMPLEMENT OF FREQUENCY
First, let’s see a simpler sentence: How many times have you been to China?
- Pattern one: Subject + … + Verb +( 过/了) + (pronoun) + number-measure word + ( noun)
你 去 过 （中国） 几次 （中国） ？
If the object is a name for a place, you can put it either before or after the number-measure word. But you can only say the following sentences in this way:
- I have seen you twice .
我见过你两次。
2. I went to the supermarket three times yesterday.
我昨天去了三次超市。
Now we come back to that simple but complicated sentence: “How often do you visit your parents?”
- Pattern one: Subject + duration + Verb +( 过/了) + (pronoun) + number-measure word + ( noun)
你多久/多长时间见一次你爸妈？
NOTE:
- In Chinese we use “ duration…number-measure word” structure to express “how often” in English.
- The number can only be “一” in a question, but can be any number in a statement. You can say 我每个星期去三次超市。 But you can only ask 你多久/多长时间去一次超市？
Excise:
Please translate the following sentences into Chinese.
- I woke up three times during the night.
- This month he was late for class three times.
- I asked him several times, but he didn’t say anything.
- Yesterday I called you ten times!
- How many times have you read this book?
- How often do you go to the cinema?
- How often do you get your hair cut?
- How often do you go to swim?
- I update my blog about once every week.
- I go to KTV twice every year.
- I chat with my older brother once every week.
The answer of the exercise is in the PDF file download.
This is Becky’s Chinese lesson, you’re welcome to share my materials to your friends.
Ten Most Important Sentence Structures for Learning Mandarin Chinese
