Why is there confusion?

In Mandarin, there’s not a strong sense about auxiliary verbs. Some people would say there’s no auxiliary words in Mandarin, and some would say there indeed is. As a native Mandarin speaker, I myself did not know the answer until I found some discussions from several Mandarin-teaching centers. There are auxiliary words in Mandarin. However, in my personal opinion, there seems to be somewhat unclear rules about which words should be considered auxiliary words and the usages of them.

English, on the other hand, has clear rules about auxiliary verbs. A complete sentence must include a subject, a verb, and sometimes an object. The verb part is a little tricky for Mandarin learners. Sometimes it should be a verb, such as eat, read, walk, run, etc., and if it is a question, a negative sentence, or a sentence in the past tense, it should be accompanied with the auxiliary verbs of do, does, or did. Some other times it should be a BE verb, such as is, are, was, were, if there is an adjective followed or if it is a progressive or passive sentence. These are extremely complicated for Mandarin learners because in Mandarin, verbs never change and no auxiliary verbs are required most of the time.

Here are some examples in English if we turn a simple sentence into a question:

1. She is beautiful. (be verb: is) / Is she beautiful?  (be verb: is) 
2. She looks beautiful. (verb: looks) / Does she look beautiful? (auxiliary verb: does)
3. She looked beautiful yesterday. (verb: looked) / Did she look beautiful yesterday? (auxiliary verb: did)

In Mandarin, the above sences are like these: (literal meaning in the brackets)

1. 她很漂亮. (she beautiful) / 她漂亮嗎? (She beautiful ma?)
2. 她看起來很漂亮. (she look beautiful) / 她看起來漂亮嗎 (she look beautiful ma?)
3. 她昨天看起來很漂亮. (she yesterday look beautiful) / 她昨天看起來很漂亮嗎? (she yesterday look beautiful ma?)

If it is a question in Mandarin, we simply add a 嗎(ma) in the end of a sentence. If it is a different tense, we just add a time (such as yesterday, last week, tomorrow, or next year) in the sentence. The verb itself never changes. 

I once heard a mother telling her daughter “The moon is look bright” when she should have said “The moon looks bright.” I also heard some people say “I don’t born there” when we should’ve said “I wasn’t born there.”  Both of the examples show that we have a hard time figuring out the right auxiliary verb to use.

How to make it right?

Maybe grammar helps. I have to admit that many second-language learners like myself do not like grammar. It feels like grammatical rules ruin all the fun of learning a language. However, after learning the grammatical rules and structures for years, I came to realize that rules and structures set me free. The reason is that when you know the rules, you have a clear answer in mind without worrying or confusing about whether you get it right or not. So, maybe we can tell ourselves to be more patient with the boredom of learning grammar because it will get us to where we want to be faster.

To sum up, auxiliary verbs really play a big part in English whereas in Mandarin, they are hard to notice. I guess it is not hard to imagine how these auxiliary verbs and the changing of them become a huge headache for us! But if we keep learning and grow more familiar with English grammatical rules, we will definitely get out of the confusion of to-be-or-not-to-be quicker!