Compare to English, I think the structure
of question sentence in Chinese is much easier. The yes-or-no question is
pretty similar as a statement sentence. The only difference is the question mark
character ‘吗’. Put ‘吗’ at the end
of a statement sentence and now you are asking question.
Let’s take sentences we learnt as an example:
Statement: 我是Vera。= I’m Vera.
Question: 我是Vera吗？= Am I Vera?
Statement: 我爱你。= I love you.
Question: 我爱你吗？= Do I love you? (Actually ‘你爱我吗？’ is more useful. It is said
in a relationship, it’s a most frequent asked question by a girl.)
There is no order changing in a yes-or-no
question in Chinese. When you know a statement sentence, you can always changed
it to a question. Notices: you still need a question mark ‘?’, although you
already have ‘吗’.
The answer for such a question is easy,
too. In most cases:
yes=是
no=不
A：你爱我吗？
B：是。
A：你是Vera吗？
B：不。
I know you learnt something now. But all
this you can find on textbook. Why do you read this? Because I have something that
not on textbook. Every time, when I taught this in class, I was confused. I
noticed though ‘是’ and ‘不’ are standard answers to a
yes-or-no question, not a lot of people will really use that. So let’s see how
a real Chinese will answer the question:
A：你是Vera吗？
B：是的。
I guess modern Chinese language prefers a two
syllables, so a lot of people will use ‘是的’ instead of ‘是’.
A：你喜欢狗吗？
B：嗯。
This one is always used with a nod. It’s
also often used in a call. I will say ‘嗯’, ‘嗯’, ‘嗯’ during a call just like you will say
‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’.
A：你喜欢咖啡吗？
B：喜欢。/不喜欢
Repeat the verb is another common way to
express ‘yes’. For negative, use ‘不’+ verb.
