When I was reading a book on Chinese grammar, I got a number of responses from those who know me.

Some would simply shake their heads, sigh, and walk away. Yet another weird book he’s reading, they must be thinking.

Others would ask, “Chinese got grammar meh?”

“Every language has grammar,” I would reply, “even Singlish has grammar!”

And a few would ask, “you mean you need to learn this?”

Of which I would reply, “those of us who’ve known Chinese since young already know the grammar intrinsically, but would you know how to explain it, say, to an angmoh friend who’s trying to learn Chinese? I doubt.”

To the last 2 groups, I often like to ask them this:

“How do you say ‘that person is very tall’ in Mandarin?”

“那个人很高” would be their typical reply.

“Ok. Then how do you say ‘that person is tall’?”

Pause.

“Ermmm… ‘那个人高’? No…”

“You see,” I explain slightly condescendingly, “we can say ‘那个人很高’ but we can’t say ‘那个人高’. Why? This is Chinese grammar.”

They get it.

* * * * *

In case you’re still wondering how to translate “that person is tall”, I’d probably translate it “那个人长的高” (”that person has grown tall”). There seems to be no straightforward way of translating it.

The grammar book I was reading says that “that person is tall” should be “那个人很高”, and “that person is very tall” is “那个人非常高”. I would disagree with this in the Singapore context, since I would understand “那个人非常高” to be closer to “that person is extremely tall”.

But hey, I was never a good student of the Chinese language, so take my views with some crystals of salt.