Published: September 22nd, 2022,
Last updated: September 22nd, 2022

Just as in German, there are also intransitive verbs in Chinese, i.e. verbs which, according to school grammar, cannot have a direct object after them and therefore do not allow a direct passive construction. In other words, even in Chinese you can say „I see you“ (transitive), but not „I go you“, because go is an intransitive verb. But anyone who has ever been told in the office that colleague XY has „gone“ knows that native speakers sometimes like to upset the grammatical world in order to create new nuances of meaning.