In today's video lesson we’ll learn two ways to say "or" in Chinese with 或者 and 还是. And we'll also learn about Alternative Questions
So 或者 and 还是 both suggests offering options, and are usually translated as “or” in English. The difference is that, 或者 is offering options in a declarative sentence/a statement to offer options, while 还是 is usually offering options to ask a question.
We'll learn about 或者 first.
To use 或者 in a declarative sentence, we can use this structure, Option 1, Opition 2 or more, and put 或者 before the last Option (X), following this structure:
For example,
To ask a question that offers options for people to choose from, we can use 还是 instead of 或者. Questions like this are called Alternative Questions, 选择疑问句(Xuǎnzé Yíwèn Jù). To ask a question with 还是, there can be two structures.
For example,
Be careful that sometimes 或者 can be used in a question, but it is not used there as the structure that raises the question. For example,
In the above sentences, it is 哪个 and 吧 that is used as the structure that raised the question, not 或者.
郝老师,谢谢您。现在我在ChineseFor.Us的网站上学了很多词汇和中文语法了。您的中文课视频对我的汉语学习非常有帮助。希望我记得您的所有的课。我也希望您的网站有一个聊天课所以学生们和老师可以谈话,学生们可以练习中文听力和口语,还有老师可以听学生们的发音很标准或者音调不准。
非常感谢你喜欢我们的课程!你的建议非常好,我们也希望未来有这样的课。虽然我们还没有决定怎么做,但也许有一天我们的老师会那样和学生们见面的!