A great place to start in learning any foreign language is to learn how to say “I love you”. This universal human expression can teach us 2 pronouns and a verb that will be used in describing passion for someone or something.
To say I love you in Chinese:
Wo Ai Ni = I Love You
Wo ai ni is the written pinyin for the three characters which taken together mean “I love you“. Note that the pinyin used here does not have the diacritic marks that signal tones (1 to 4). Instead, “for the sake of convenience, tone selection is disabled by default in most modern pinyin systems on the computer.” (Wikipedia – Pinyin Input Methods).
* wo 我 I
* ai 爱 love
* ni 你 you
Expanding The Pattern
Switch pronoun order:
Ni ai wo = You love me
Note that subject and object pronouns are the same, there is no change as in English with I/me he/him etc.
Add question tag ma/吗:
Ni ai wo ma = Do you love me?
Ta is the personal pronoun for he, she, and it. Changing ni to ta in our pattern from above, we have:
Ta ai wo = He/she loves me
Ta ai wo ma = does he/she love me?