Chinese sentences have very strict word order. The meaning of what is said may depend on it.
In other words, changing the order of words can change the meaning of a sentence.
The basic structure of a Chinese sentence looks like:
Scheme
subject
who? what?
predicate
what does?
object
who?/what?/with what?
Examples
我是学生
I'm a student
wǒ shì xuésheng
他吃苹果
He eats an apple
tā chī píngguǒ
The extended sentence structure with additional parts of the sentence looks like this:
Scheme
time
subject
(time)
place
predicate
duration
Pay attention
Time words can come before or after the subject.
Examples
星期六晚上我们坐火车去西安
We will take the train to Xi'an on Saturday night.
xīngqīliù wǎnshàng wǒmen zuò huǒchē qù xī'ān
我只睡了半个小时
I only slept for half an hour.
wǒ zhǐ shuì le bàn ge xiǎoshí
Pay attention
Depending on the grammar used in the sentence, the word order may change. There can be additional parts of the sentence or auxiliary parts of speech.
However there are basic rules one needs to remember:
1) the subject comes before the predicate;
2) the time words come first, then the place words. Both usually come before the predicate;
3) the definitive always comes before the definite word;
4) according to the context, known information comes first and new information comes afterwards.
There are cases when the word order is reversed. This is called inversion.