Learn Hardcore Chinese: tā wǎnshang yí gè rén zǒu zài mǎlù shàng yǒudiǎnr hàipà, dànshì zhè gè dìfang hěn ānquán. - At night she feels a bit afraid walking alone on the road, but this place is very safe.

It comes after the subject 她 and before the verb phrase, so it describes how she is walking (manner), not how many people there are in total.
If you just wanted to emphasize number, you’d more likely say something like:
只有一个人走在马路上 – “Only one person is walking on the road.”

A very common pattern is:

她一个人去。 – She goes by herself.
我一个人吃饭。 – I eat alone.

So when 一个人 comes after the subject and before the main verb, it very often means “alone / by oneself” rather than just “one person” in the head-counting sense.

Why is 晚上 placed after 她 and before 一个人? Could I say 晚上她一个人走在马路上 or 她一个人晚上走在马路上 instead?

The sentence uses a very typical Mandarin word order:

她 (subject) + 晚上 (time) + 一个人 (manner) + 走在马路上 (place + action)

The general pattern is:

Subject – Time – Manner – Place – Verb/Action – (other parts)

So 她晚上一个人走在马路上 is very natural.

Other options:

晚上，她一个人走在马路上… – Also natural. Putting the time at the very beginning is fine and often used in narration.
她一个人晚上走在马路上… – Possible, but it sounds a bit less natural and slightly marked. It can put a bit more “closeness” between 一个人 and 她 (“she alone”), but most speakers would default to the original order.

You almost never need 在晚上 here; 晚上 by itself is the normal way to say “at night” when it’s just a time word. 在 is not required with simple time expressions.

What is the difference between 走在马路上 and 在马路上走? Are both correct?

Both are correct and very common:

走在马路上
- Structure: 走在 + 地方上 (verb + 在 + place phrase).
- Feels like “walk, being on the road,” with the location as a kind of result/setting of the action.
在马路上走
- Structure: 在 + 地方 + 走 (prepositional phrase + verb).
- Literally “on the road, walk.”

In everyday speech, the difference is very small, and both can usually be swapped without changing the meaning significantly. Some people feel:

在马路上走 = a tiny bit more neutral.
走在马路上 = can feel slightly more descriptive or narrative (common in written or literary-style Chinese).

In your sentence, 她晚上一个人走在马路上 could very easily be 她晚上一个人在马路上走 with no real change in meaning.

Why do we need both 在 and 上 in 走在马路上? Could we say 走在马路 or 走马路上?

You need both to form a natural, complete location phrase:

在 marks location, roughly like English “at / in / on”.
上 in 马路上 indicates on the surface of the road.

So:

走在马路上 ≈ “walk (being) on the road.”

About your alternatives:

走在马路 – feels incomplete / ungrammatical in standard Mandarin. 马路 alone is a bare noun; we usually need something like 上, 里, 旁边 after a noun to make a clear location phrase:
- 在马路上 – on the road
- 在马路旁边 – beside the road
走马路上 – also unnatural in standard Mandarin; it is missing 在 that links “walking” to the location.

Two very normal patterns to keep in mind:

在 + 地点 + V
- 在马路上走 – walk on the road.
V + 在 + 地点
- 走在马路上 – walk (while being) on the road.

What exactly does 有点儿 mean here? How is it different from 一点儿 and 有一点儿?

In this sentence:

有点儿害怕

有点儿 means “a bit / a little (too)…”, with a slightly negative or undesirable feeling.

有点儿害怕 ≈ “(she is) a bit scared / a little afraid,” implying it’s not ideal, maybe she’s uneasy, worried.

Differences:

有点儿 + adjective / psychological verb
- Often used when the speaker feels something is not quite good / slightly bothersome.
- 有点儿贵 – a bit too expensive.
- 有点儿累 – a bit tired (and that’s not great).
- 有点儿害怕 – a bit scared (uneasy).
一点儿 by itself
- Usually modifies nouns or appears after verbs:
  - 一点儿水 – a little water.
  - 吃一点儿东西 – eat a little something.
有一点儿
- Very similar to 有点儿, also used with adjectives/verbs:
  - 有一点儿冷
- Often sounds a bit more neutral or slightly stronger than 有点儿, and a bit more “careful/formal” in tone.
- In your sentence, 有一点儿害怕 would also be fine, just a tiny bit more explicit/formal.

So:

有点儿害怕 – natural and common, with a mild “not completely comfortable” nuance.

Do I have to say 有点儿 with the -r sound? What’s the difference between 有点儿 and 有点?

有点儿 (yǒudiǎnr) and 有点 (yǒudiǎn) have the same basic meaning and are both widely used.

有点儿 with the -r is more common in northern / Beijing-influenced speech and writing.
有点 without 儿 is often heard in southern accents and is also very common in writing.

In most modern texts and in teaching materials, you’ll see 有点儿 a lot, but using 有点 will not be wrong. There is no big meaning difference; it’s mainly a regional / stylistic choice.

So you can say either:

有点儿害怕
有点害怕

Both are acceptable.

Is 害怕 a verb (“to fear”) or an adjective (“afraid”)? Could I also say 她有点儿怕?

害怕 (hàipà) in modern Mandarin behaves like a stative verb (“to be afraid / to fear”), and often functions similarly to an adjective.

In your sentence:

有点儿害怕 = “(she is) a bit afraid.”

You can treat it very much like an adjective in patterns such as:

有点儿害怕
非常害怕
她很害怕 – She is very scared.

About 怕 (pà):

怕 can also mean “to fear / be afraid of”, and is common in speech.
她有点儿怕 is grammatically fine and colloquial, but:
- 怕 often expects an object (what she’s afraid of):
  - 她有点儿怕黑。 – She’s a bit afraid of the dark.
- 害怕 can more naturally stand alone as an emotional state.

So in this context, with no explicit object, 有点儿害怕 is slightly more natural and explicit than 有点儿怕.

What is the difference between 但是, 可是, and 不过? Why did this sentence use 但是?

All three can translate as “but / however”, and all three are common. Roughly:

但是 (dànshì)
- Slightly more formal / neutral.
- Very common in both speech and writing.
可是 (kěshì)
- Often feels a bit more colloquial / emotional, especially at the beginning of a sentence.
不过 (búguò)
- Literally “only / just / however”.
- Feels slightly softer, sometimes like “but still…” or “however, actually…”.

In your sentence:

… 有点儿害怕，但是这个地方很安全。

You could almost freely replace 但是 with 可是 or 不过:

… 有点儿害怕，可是这个地方很安全。
… 有点儿害怕，不过这个地方很安全。

All would be natural; the choice of 但是 just keeps it neutral and clear, which is ideal for a textbook-style example.

Does 很 in 很安全 really mean “very safe”? Or is it just a grammar word here?

In sentences like:

这个地方很安全。

很 (hěn) is a degree adverb, but:

In many everyday contexts, especially with simple descriptive statements, 很 often doesn’t strongly mean “very”.
It can function more like a linker that makes the sentence sound natural when an adjective is used as the predicate.

Compare:

这个地方安全。
- Grammatically possible, but in everyday speech it can sound a bit abrupt or like a contrast (“this place is safe (as opposed to something else)”).
这个地方很安全。
- The normal, neutral way to say “This place is safe.”
- Depending on voice stress/context, it can range from neutral “is safe” to “is quite/very safe”.

So here 很安全 is best read as “(is) safe” with a slight sense of “quite safe,” not necessarily strongly “very safe.”

Why is 个 used as the measure word in 一个人 and 这个地方? Are there other possible measure words?

个 (gè) is the default, very general measure word in Mandarin, and:

For 人 (person), 个 is the standard classifier:
- 一个人 – one person / alone
- 三个人 – three people
For 地方 (place), 个 is also very common:
- 这个地方 – this place
- 那个地方 – that place

There are other more specialized measure words for “place” in more formal or written contexts, like:

一处地方 – one spot/place (more formal / written)
一块地方 – a piece of land / area

But in everyday speech, 个 is the most natural and common for both 人 and 地方 in this kind of sentence.

Why use 这个地方 instead of just 这里? Is there any difference?

Both are possible, but they feel a bit different:

这个地方 (zhè ge dìfang) – “this place / this area”
- Slightly more descriptive / noun-like.
- Refers to a place as an area or region, not just the physical point where the speaker is.
这里 (zhèli) – “here”
- More like a pure location word (“here / at this spot”).
- Very common in conversation.

Compare:

这个地方很安全。
- Sounds like a more general statement about an area (a neighborhood, a district, a town, etc.) being safe overall.
这里很安全。
- More like “It’s safe here (where we are).”

In your sentence, 这个地方很安全 gives a slightly broader, more descriptive feeling: it speaks about the place she is in as a whole, not just “this precise spot I’m standing on.”

There is no 了 or past tense marker. How do we know if this sentence is talking about the past or present?

Mandarin generally does not mark tense (past/present/future) the way English does. Instead, it relies on:

Time words (昨天, 晚上, 明天, etc.)
Aspect markers (了, 过, 着) when needed
Context

In this sentence:

她晚上一个人走在马路上有点儿害怕，但是这个地方很安全。

By default, without extra context, it can be read as:

A general/habitual description:
- “At night, when she walks alone on the road, she feels a bit afraid, but this place is (in general) very safe.”
Or a specific past event if surrounding context tells a story in the past.

If you want to make it clearly past for a one-time event, you might say:

那天晚上，她一个人走在马路上，有点儿害怕，但是这个地方很安全。
– That night, she was walking alone on the road and felt a bit scared, but this place was very safe.

So: without extra markers, the sentence is tense-flexible, and you infer time from 周围的上下文 (surrounding context) and time words like 晚上.

Are there any tone changes (tone sandhi) in this sentence that I should watch out for, like in 一个人 or 有点儿?

Yes, there are a couple of common ones:

一个人 – yí gè rén
- Written tones: yī gè rén (1st, 4th, 2nd).
- Pronounced: yí gè rén – the 一 (yī) becomes yí (2nd tone) because it comes before a 4th-tone syllable (个).
- This is a standard rule: 一 usually changes to yí (2nd tone) before a 4th-tone syllable.
有点儿 – yǒu diǎnr
- 有 (yǒu) is 3rd tone, 点 (diǎn) is also 3rd tone.
- In normal speech, two 3rd tones in a row undergo sandhi:
  - yǒu diǎn → yóu diǎn (the first 3rd tone becomes a 2nd tone in pronunciation).
- So you’ll hear something like yóu diǎnr, even though it’s written 3rd + 3rd.

Other words in the sentence use their normal tones:

晚上 – wǎnshang (3rd + neutral)
马路 – mǎlù (3rd + 4th)
害怕 – hàipà (4th + 4th)
安全 – ānquán (1st + 2nd)

Being aware of tone sandhi (especially with 一, 不, and 3rd-tone pairs) will make your pronunciation sound much more natural.