As I mentioned before, Chinese grammar is extremely easy. I'm going to explain two characters or words that are used only for grammar purposes. The first is "de." It's actually a set of three words that are all pronounced the same: 的, 地, and 得. They can all be roughly translated as "of" or "in," but they have different uses. The first 的 is used before a noun, a little like the -ed and -ing appendixes in English. For example, "an interested party" would be translated as "感兴趣的一方," and "an interesting party" as "令人感兴趣的派对." There are no words that are just adjectives, so it is pretty important for marking out which is which. The second 地 is used before a verb, analogous to the -ly in English, as in "She smiled happily" which would be translated as "她高兴地笑了." You'll notice that in Chinese, we put the adverb before the verb in most cases, though there are exceptions. The final one is a little hard to explain, so I'll just give you an example first: "你做得真 好!" which means "You did so well." It is used after the verb to indicate the words to follow are descriptive of the verb. It differs from 地 substantially, and you'll learn them in time. There's a quite simple way to determine which one to use in a sentence, though I suppose it's only applicable to people who regularly speak Chinese. Pronounce the words by their "original" or “alternative pronunciation," and see if it sounds right. 的 is pronounced as "dē," 地 as "dì," and 得 as "dé." The latter two mean “ground” and "get," respectively, when used in other contexts. It is quite strange, but the method actually works most of the time. Now for the second grammar word—了. This word is what you've always wished you had in your language. With 了, you can represent all the past tenses! There are no special forms for past, present, and future as in English, French, or other widely used Indo-European languages. When we want to say something happened in the past, you can just drop the 了(le) at the end or after the verb. For example, "我做完了!" means "I have finished!" and "上周我校举行了运动会" means "Last week, the school sports meet took place." It doesn't matter if it's past simple or past progressive, a simple word is enough, and sometimes, it's okay to lose it too! As for the future, there are some words associated with it like 会(will) and 将要(will), but they aren't necessary. For example, "我们 明天再见!" means "We'll see each other tomorrow!" I hope that was informative and helpful. Chinese is really simple if you look past all the characters. The grammar is simple, it's easy to pronounce, and there are 1.4 billion people in the world that speak it. Why not learn it? 我们下期再见! See you next issue!