SVO word order

· from English

What is SVO word order?

SVO is the subject-verb-object word order, used by English, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay and Indonesian.

Mandarin is basically SVO but allows topic fronting and the 把 bǎ construction that moves objects before the verb. Most Southeast Asian languages are firmly SVO, while Tagalog and Cebuano are typically verb-initial. Shared SVO order is one reason English speakers find Mandarin sentence structure approachable.

Examples

我吃蘋果 wǒ chī píngguǒ (I eat apples); Vietnamese tôi ăn táo; Malay saya makan epal; Indonesian saya makan apel

Kungfucius says: Same word order as English. Do not let it lull you into a false sense of security.