The 把 Construction: Doing Something to an Object

Most of the time, Chinese sentences follow a simple subject-verb-object order: 我吃了苹果 (wǒ chī le píngguǒ), "I ate the apple." That works fine for a lot of sentences. But Chinese has another pattern that puts the object before the verb using the word 把 (bǎ). Once you get comfortable with it, you will see it everywhere.

What 把 actually does

把 takes the object and moves it in front of the verb. The basic shape looks like this:

Subject + 把 + Object + Verb + Result

The object comes right after 把, and the verb comes after that. So instead of saying "I ate the apple," you say something like "I took the apple and ate it up."

Here is the same idea in Chinese:

• 我吃了苹果。 (Wǒ chī le píngguǒ.) -- I ate the apple.
• 我把苹果吃了。 (Wǒ bǎ píngguǒ chī le.) -- I ate the apple (and it's gone).

Both sentences mean roughly the same thing, but the 把 version puts more emphasis on what happened to the apple.

The verb can't stand alone

This is the most important rule: in a 把 sentence, the verb almost never appears by itself. It needs something attached to it to show the result or completion of the action. That extra bit is often:

• 了 (le) -- showing the action is done
• A resultative complement like 完 (wán, "finished"), 掉 (diào, "away/off"), or 好 (hǎo, "properly")
• A directional complement like 来 or 去

Some examples:

• 他把书看完了。(Tā bǎ shū kàn wán le.) -- He finished reading the book.
• 我把手机放好了。(Wǒ bǎ shǒujī fàng hǎo le.) -- I put the phone away properly.
• 她把门关上了。(Tā bǎ mén guān shàng le.) -- She closed the door.
• 请把窗户打开。(Qǐng bǎ chuānghu dǎ kāi.) -- Please open the window.

Notice that in every case, something follows the verb to show what happened to the object.

When do you actually use 把?

Not every sentence needs 把. It tends to show up when:

You want to show that something was done to an object and the object was affected or moved. If you tidied up the room, rearranged something, ate something up, or lost something, 把 fits naturally.

• 我把房间打扫干净了。(Wǒ bǎ fángjiān dǎsǎo gānjìng le.) -- I cleaned the room (and it's clean now).
• 他把钱花完了。(Tā bǎ qián huā wán le.) -- He spent all the money.

The object is specific and known. 把 almost always takes a definite object, something both the speaker and listener already know about. You wouldn't say "I 把'd a book" about some random book you'd never mentioned. The book needs to be "the book" -- a specific one.

What 把 sentences cannot do

A few things to watch out for:

Don't use 把 with verbs that don't show action on an object. Verbs like 是, 有, 在, 觉得, 知道, and 喜欢 don't work with 把.

• You cannot say: 我把他喜欢。
• Correct: 我喜欢他。(Wǒ xǐhuān tā.) -- I like him.

Don't leave the verb bare. As mentioned above, the verb needs a result attached. 我把苹果吃 on its own sounds incomplete.

Don't use 把 with negative sentences easily. Negatives like 不 and 没 go before 把, not before the verb.

• 我没把作业做完。(Wǒ méi bǎ zuòyè zuò wán.) -- I didn't finish the homework.

A quick way to think about it

把 is sometimes described as a way of saying "I took [the object] and did [something] to it." That mental picture helps. You grab the object with 把, move it to the front, and then describe what you did to it with the rest of the sentence.

Once you start noticing 把 in sentences you read or hear, the pattern clicks pretty fast. Look for that 把 sitting right before a noun, and you'll know what to expect.