Language Course

坐出租车Travelling by taxi

Sentence Patterns and Grammatical Explanations

Chinese monetary units

Chinese monetary units are yuán, jiǎo and fēn. In colloquial speech, kuài, máo are often used.

For the detailed explanation of the usage of Chinese monetary units, please see the link to C4EU: http://www.chinese4.eu/chinese-for-you/component/11/136/money_in_chinese/explanations

不好意思,我看不懂英文。

Bù hǎo yìsi, wǒ kàn bù dǒng Yīngwén.

Sorry. I can't read English.

As learners of Chinese, quite often we have to express we don't understand something, especially at the beginning stage of learning. One useful way to express that is to use the potential complement 不懂 (bù dǒng), which means the subject does not have the ability to understand.

Subject+ Perception Verb +不懂
kàn
不懂
bù dǒng
英文。
Yīngwén.
I read can't understand English.
tīng
不懂
bù dǒng
中文。
Zhōngwén.
I listen can't understand Chinese.
John
John
kàn
不懂
bù dǒng
中文报纸。
Zhōngwén bàozhǐ.
John read can't understand Chinese newspaper.
Project 2014-1-PL01-KA200-003591