Questions & Answers about Tā juédìng bù cānjiā zhège kǎoshì.
Why is there no word for “will” or “is going to” in this Chinese sentence? In English we say “She decided not to take this exam,” which feels like the future.
Chinese usually doesn’t mark tense (past, present, future) with extra words like will or changes in the verb.
- 决定 (juédìng) by itself means “to decide”.
- Whether the decision is about the future is understood from context.
So 她决定不参加这个考试。 can be translated as:
- “She decided not to take this exam.” (past decision)
- “She has decided not to take this exam.”
The time is normally clear from context, or you can add a time word: 她昨天决定不参加这个考试。 (“She decided yesterday not to take this exam.”)
Why is the negation 不 (bù) placed before 参加 (cānjiā) and not before 决定 (juédìng)?
不 directly negates the verb or adjective that comes right after it.
- 她决定不参加这个考试。
= “She decides not to take this exam.”
Here, the decision itself is not negated; what’s negated is 参加 (“to take/attend”).
If you say:
- 她不决定参加这个考试。
this sounds very unnatural and would mean something like “She does not decide to take this exam,” which is not how Chinese speakers express this idea. The natural way is to negate the action being decided, not the deciding itself.
Can we add 了 (le) after 决定 to show past tense, like 她决定了不参加这个考试。?