Chinese Grammar- Verb Conjugation

I restarted my Chinese (Mandarin) lessons back in early January. My teacher Amanda and I have abandoned the beginner book. It turns out that those lessons are too basic, and I still remember most of the grammar patterns from my classes in July and August 2007. So we are using all sorts of sources to work around some of the common grammar patterns found in Chinese. The language has some fascinating aspects and I thought that I would share some with you as I learn them.

The first and most intriguing grammar point for me to date, is verb conjugation. Thankfully, there is none in this language. After memorizing mountains of irregular French verbs, some German and Spanish verbs, it is a relief to find that this is much simpler. Conjugation of verbs is not necessary because time (past,present and future) is denoted with the use of time words such as yesterday, next week, last year, in the sentence.

The Chinese use of only characters also makes it impossible to denote time; there is only one character for the verb- no modifications can be made to it to show time or subject gender or number (no masculine, feminine, neuter or plural). Although the Japanese also use characters (kanji) for writing, the use of katakana allows them the flexibility of adding endings to the verb which indicate past tense. For example : tabemasu (present tense for the verb to eat) becomes tabemashita (past tense)- the stem is the same and the ending is in katakana.

An example in Mandarin (using pinyin without the inflections)- where "qu" is the verb "to go":
Wo qu zai Pudong feijichang. (I go to the Pudong airport)
Mingtian, ta qu zai Pudong feijichang. (He will go to the Pudong airport tomorrow)

The verb stays the same, whether the subject is you, me or us, and whether we talk about events to come or those passed. Thank goodness it is this way since learning measure words (more about that later), inflections, and the writing and other things particular to Mandarin, are complicated enough. I'll take the breaks where I can get them!