Two colleagues are planning a project. The English speaker says, "We will finish by Friday." The Mandarin speaker says, 星期五完成 — literally, "Friday complete." The first sentence is unremarkable in English but ungrammatical without the auxiliary will; the second is unremarkable in Mandarin but would sound telegraphic in English. This small grammatical difference — whether … Continue reading The Grammar in Your Head: How English and Chinese Structure Time, Thought, and Culture