Yes or No Questions

Last week, I introduce a few simple sentence structure in positive form, negative and question forms. The lattest, the question, is referring to close ended question. It is a questions that can only be answered with YES or NO.

Apart from the use of 吗ma, here is another way of asking a Yes/No Question:

When subject “meets” with a VERB
(?) Subject + Verb + 不 bù + Verb

Example: Does she eat Hamburger?

 (?) 他吃汉堡包吗？       tā chī hànbaǒbāo ma?          does she eat hamburger?

OR
(?) 他吃不吃汉堡包？   tā chī bù chī hànbaǒbāo?        does she eat hamburger?

When subject “meets”  with an ADJECTIVE

(?) Subject + Adj + 不 bù + Adj

Example: Is your teacher tall?

(?) 你的老师高吗？               nǐ de lǎoshī gāo ma?             is your teacher tall?

OR
(?) 你的老师高不高？           nǐ de lǎoshī gāo bù gāo?       is your teacher tall?

When subject “meets”  with a NOUN

(?) Subject + 是不是 shì bù shì + Noun

Example: Is that your school?

(?) 那是你的学校吗？     nà shì nǐdexuéxiào ma?           is that your school?

OR
(?) 那是不是你的学校？ nà shì bù shì nǐdexuéxiào?      is that your school?

Here is How we answer to the questions above:

Q: 他吃不吃汉堡包？ OR他吃汉堡包吗？

A: Yes, I eat.              

   我吃wǒ chī OR  吃 chī

     No, I don’t.           

   不bù OR 我不吃 wǒ bù chī

Q: 你的老师高不高？ OR你的老师高吗？ 

A: Yes, She is

    高 gāo OR他高 tā gāo

     No, She is not

     不高 būgāo OR他不高 tā bùgāo

Q: 那是你的学校吗？ OR那是不是你的学校？

A: Yes, it is

     是 shì

     No, it is not

     不是 bùshì

Yes? No?
Linda Tan