In lesson 26 we learned about an unusual grammatical particle bǎ (把).

Let’s step back and look at the basic Chinese sentence structure.

• subject-verb-object

This sentence structure is easy for us English speakers because English follows the same pattern. Unlike German and Japanese which is …

• subject-object-verb

Well, the bad news is that Chinese can go both ways. Chinese speakers can use the bǎ (把) particle to invert the basic sentence structure to subject-object-verb

“Why”, You might ask, “would they want to do that?” The primary reason is that Chinese does not permit verb modifiers to follow an object. This means, for example, a sentence like “Throw the ball to the catcher” is not allowed in mandarin. Because “to the catcher”, follows the object (ball).

For a clear, written description, you can checkout the Chinese Grammar Wiki

For a video discription, Learn Chinese Now does a pretty good job of explaining how this works. Below are the examples used in the video

Twin Cities Chinese Tutor Also does a good job of explaining how this works. Below are the examples used in the video