Chinese for the Casual Learner

Answering Yes/No Questions

Chinese does not have a universal Yes/No answer as in English. To answer in the affirmative, you repeat the verb used in the question. To answer in the negative, you answer with bú (not) in front of the verb. This means that you need to pay attention to which verb was used in the question in order to provide the correct answer. The one critical exception to this rule occurs when the verb is yǒu (to have) in which case the negative prefix is answer is méi instead of bú. If you are at a loss but know that your answer is negative, you can probably make yourself understood by simply saying bú, even though it will not be grammatically in many cases.

[When is bu by itself correct?]

The following table shows the yes/no answers for some of the most commonly used verbs.

Other Possible Answers

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