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Lesson

Who

1. Explain it simply

In Chinese, 'who' (谁) stays in the same position as the person/subject it replaces. You don't need to move it to the front of the sentence like in English.

Unlike English where we rearrange the sentence to put 'who' at the beginning, Chinese maintains its natural subject-verb-object word order even in questions.

2. Show examples

他是谁?

Tā shì shéi?

Who is he? (He is who?)

谁 stays in object position

谁是老师?

Shéi shì lǎoshī?

Who is the teacher?

谁 in subject position

你是谁?

Nǐ shì shéi?

Who are you?

Direct question pattern

3. Share a tip

Think of 谁 (shéi) as a blank space in the sentence that you're asking someone to fill in. Whatever position makes sense for the answer is where 谁 should go in the question.

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