In our previous post, we touched on action verbs relating to eyes, mouth, leg etc. Today, we will learn how to actually use the action verb ‘to go’ to form easy Chinese expressions and phrases starting with the easy Chinese Phrase “Where are you going?“
In order to improve your Chinese speaking skill, you need to expand your Chinese vocabulary lists. By doing so, you will then be able to hold a conversation even if the sentence is grammatically incorrect. By using the correct vocabulary, people will still be able to understand what you are trying to say. Don’t be shy to make mistake. Only through mistakes will you then be able to learn. ^^
Action verb – go
In Chinese, the action verb for to go is 去 qù. The Chinese word 去 is a very high frequency Chinese word you would want to remember. High frequency means it is used very often in conversation.
How do you say where are you going in Chinese？
If you have been following our blog or youtube channel, you would probably know the Chinese word for where is 哪里 nǎ lǐ or 哪儿 nǎ er
The simplest way to say where are you going in Chinese is,
去哪里？qù nǎ lǐ?
去哪儿？qù nǎ er?
Literal translation: go where?
If you want to add the pronoun you, you can say
你去哪里？Nǐ qù nǎ lǐ?
你去哪儿？Nǐ qù nǎ er?
Literal translation: you go where?
Normally, the pronoun can be omitted when you are having a conversation with that person.
Expanding the sentence “where are you going?”
Add name of places
去学校 qù xué xiào
go to school
去上班 qù shàng bān
go to work
去商场 qù shāng chǎng
go to the market
Add the word together
If you can remember from our previous post, the Chinese word we learned for together is 一起. If we add this Chinese word with the sentences above, we will have
一起去学校 yī qǐ qù xué xiào
go to school together
Literal translation: together go school
一起去上班 yī qǐ qù shàng bān
go to work together
Literal translation: together go work
一起去商场 yī qǐ qù shāng chǎng
go to the market together
Literal translation: together go market
Add noun such as friend, wife or mother
If you are interested to learn about family members in Chinese, do visit and subscribe to our youtube channel here.
Before you add the noun in front of 一起, you need to add another Chinese word 和 to mean go together with. 和 in English is with.
和爸爸一起去学校 hé bàba yī qǐ qù xué xiào
go to school with my dad
Literal translation: with father together go school
和老婆/妻子一起去上班 hé lǎo pó/qī zi yī qǐ qù shàng bān
go to work with my wife
Literal translation: with wife together go work
和妈妈一起去商场 hé mā ma yī qǐ qù shāng chǎng
go to the market with my mother
Literal translation: with mother together go market
Add time phrase
Refer to the post about time phrase if you have missed it.
昨天和爸爸一起去学校
zuó tiān hé bàba yī qǐ qù xué xiào
I went to school with dad yesterday
Literal translation: yesterday with father together go school
早上八点和老婆 / 妻子一起去上班
zǎo shang bā diǎn hé lǎo pó/qī zi yī qǐ qù shàng bān
Go to work together with my wife at eight this morning
Literal translation: morning eight o’clock with wife go to work
明天和妈妈一起去商场
míng tiān hé mā ma yī qǐ qù shāng chǎng
Going to the market with my mom tomorrow
Literal translation: tomorrow with mother go market
How to learn Chinese？
When learning a foreign language, you need to listen and speak more. Pick up as many vocabularies as you can and form sentences with those vocabularies. Initially, it does not matter whether your sentence is grammatically incorrect. Just join the vocabularies together and expand the sentence bit by bit. Of course, the vocabulary you use has to be related to the topic of conversation.
For example, now that you know the Chinese word for go is 去，you may also know the vocabulary for country such as America 美国, next year is 明年, you can then join those vocabularies together to make a sentence.
You may say 去美国明年 qù měiguó míng nián which means go America next year. Grammatically it is not correct in Chinese, but it does make sense. People will have no problem understanding you. As you improve your Chinese language skill, you will know that in Chinese, the time phrase is normally after a pronoun or before a verb.
（我）明年去美国
The important thing is not afraid of making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the better you will get. It is better to speak then to be quiet. Learning language is all about listening and speaking.
If you like this post, do remember to come back for more posts on verbs and their usages. Don’t forget to leave a comment or a sentence using the action verb to go in our comment section.
Thank you for reading.
