You may have heard that word order in Chinese is very similar to that of English, and compared to a language like Japanese, it is. 

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Fairly quickly, though, you'll start to realize that there are quite a few ways that the word order of even relatively simple sentences simply doesn't match in Chinese and English. 

And you start to make mistakes often when you want to say anything a little longer than "I'm from the Uk" like I came to Shanghai in 2001.
This super clear and simple summary of Chinese word order will help you correct many easily-made mistakes when you speak Chinese.

1. The Basic SVO Sentence

On this level, the Chinese word order very closely matches the English word order. "SVO" stands for "Subject-Verb-Object" . For extremely simple sentences like "I love you" or "he eats glass," the word order of Chinese matches that of English, literally, word for word. Keep in mind that "SVO" doesn't include little details like articles (a, the, etc.) or prepositions (to, for, etc.).

 Subject + Verb + Object

This concept shouldn't take long at all to master. For the most part, this word order makes sense "by default" for English speakers.

2. Adding extra information to a sentence

More details can be added to the basic sentence structure. How to do this is demonstrated below.

2.1 Placement of time words in a sentence

Time words, the WHEN part of a sentence, have a special place in Chinese. They usually come at the beginning of a sentence, right after the subject. Occasionally you'll see them before the subject, but the place you won't be seeing them is at the end of the sentence (where they frequently appear in English).

2.2 Placement of place words in a sentence

When you want to tell WHERE something happened in Chinese (at school, at work, in Vegas, on the bus, etc.), you're most often going to use a phrase beginning with 在. This phrase needs to come after the time word (see above) and before the verb. Pay attention to this last part: before the verb. In English, this information naturally comes after the verb, so it's going to be difficult at first to get used to saying WHERE something happened before saying the verb.

For some common exceptions to this word order, please see the following section.

Exceptions to the normal placement of place words 

There are some special verbs that seem to be allowed to break the rules. For these special verbs, the WHERE information comes after the verb rather than before. It's important to remember that these verbs are exceptions. If you're not sure where the place phrase should go, it's usually safer to put it before the verb. This is the normal way to modify a verb in Chinese.

2.3 Placement of duration in a sentence

Whenever you talk about FOR HOW LONG, you're getting into duration. It's not the same as a regular time word; it has its own rules.

Besides time, place, and duration, there are 4 other common types of extra information you often use, like manner, instrument, target, also. The order is quite different from English and easily causes English speakers to make mistakes when they want to add more information. 

And there is also a Mnemonic Trick that helps you remember the word order quickly.

But it's too much to get all in one article. 

We will share the tips in the next one so you can first focus on the above orders to well understand the difference and speak in the right way.

Cheers to your Chinese study!

加油！

SN Mandarin Teaching Team