Meaning & use
Chinese
Last updated
Meanings
adjectivenot comparable
Connected with China, its people, culture or languages.
Grammar: Goes before a noun or after be: Chinese tea; the festival is Chinese.
Patterns
- Chinese food
- Chinese New Year
We celebrated Chinese New Year with a big family meal.
She studies Chinese history at university.
This Chinese vase is over three hundred years old.
noununcountable
The group of related languages spoken in China, especially Mandarin.
Grammar: No article for the language: she speaks Chinese.
Patterns
- speak Chinese
- learn Chinese
He is learning Chinese before moving to Shanghai.
Chinese has thousands of written characters.
The sign was written in both English and Chinese.
nounplural
People from China or of Chinese origin, taken as a group.
Grammar: Used with the and a plural verb; for one person say a Chinese woman or a Chinese citizen.
Patterns
- the Chinese
The Chinese invented paper long before Europe did.
Many Chinese live in this neighborhood.
nouncountableinformalBritish
A meal of Chinese-style food, often a takeout order.
Grammar: Informal, mostly British: let's get a Chinese.
Patterns
- get a Chinese
Shall we order a Chinese tonight?
We went for a Chinese after the film.
Common combinations
- Chinese New Year
- Chinese New Year falls in January or February.
- Chinese restaurant
- There is a Chinese restaurant near my office.
- speak Chinese
- She speaks Chinese at home.
- Chinese characters
- Chinese characters take years to master.
- traditional Chinese medicine
- He studied traditional Chinese medicine.
Synonyms and how they differ
- Mandarin
- Mandarin names one specific Chinese language, the most widely spoken, so it is narrower than Chinese.
- Cantonese
- Cantonese is another Chinese language, spoken mainly in the south, and is not interchangeable with Chinese.
- Sino-
- Sino- is a prefix used in compounds such as Sino-American, more formal than Chinese.
Word family
- China proper noun
- the country
- Chinatown proper noun
- a district with Chinese shops and restaurants
- Sinology noun
- the study of Chinese culture
Commonly confused: Chinese or china?
Chinese vs china
With a lowercase c, china means fine porcelain dishes, and is pronounced differently at the start (/ˈtʃaɪnə/).
Practice
Which sentence is correct about the people of China?
Choose one answer.
Chinese stays unchanged in the plural with no s. Chineses and Chinas are not valid, and the apostrophe form is a possessive.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “Chinese”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.