Learn Hardcore Chinese: háizi chī le tài duō bīngqílín hé qiǎokèlì, juéde dùzi hěn bù shūfu. - The child ate too much ice cream and chocolate and feels that her stomach is very uncomfortable.

It tells us the action 吃 (to eat) is completed: the child has indeed eaten that amount of ice cream and chocolate.
Chinese doesn’t change the verb form for past / present / future. Instead, it uses particles like 了 to show whether an action is completed, ongoing, etc.
So 吃了 is more like “has eaten / ate (already, as a finished event)” rather than a general past tense marker.

You can have past-time sentences without 了, and non-past sentences with 了 if they describe completed events, so it’s not a straightforward “past tense” sign.

Could we leave out 了 and just say 孩子吃太多冰淇淋和巧克力? What’s the difference?

You can say 孩子吃太多冰淇淋和巧克力, and it’s grammatical, but the nuance is different:

孩子吃了太多冰淇淋和巧克力: Focuses on a specific completed event – on this occasion, the child ate too much.
孩子吃太多冰淇淋和巧克力 (without 了): More likely to sound general / habitual, like “The child (tends to) eat too much ice cream and chocolate” or a description of a pattern.

In your original sentence, because the result is 肚子很不舒服, we’re clearly talking about a particular completed instance, so 了 fits very naturally.

Why do we have both 太 (tài) and 多 (duō) in 太多 (tài duō)? What’s the difference between 太多 and 很多?

Both 太多 and 很多 involve “a lot / too many”, but they’re not the same:

太多 literally: “too much / too many” — it implies excess, more than is good.
- 吃了太多冰淇淋 = “ate too much ice cream (to an unhealthy degree)”.
很多: “many / a lot of”, but neutral about whether it’s good or bad.
- 吃了很多冰淇淋 = “ate a lot of ice cream” (quantity is large, but not necessarily excessive).

In this sentence, we want to explain why the stomach feels bad, so the idea of excess is important, hence 太多.

Why is there no measure word, like 太多个冰淇淋? When do we need measure words with things like ice cream and chocolate?

With 太多冰淇淋和巧克力, 冰淇淋 and 巧克力 are treated as types / substances, not as individual countable units:

太多冰淇淋 ≈ “too much ice cream (in general)”.
太多巧克力 ≈ “too much chocolate”.

If you want to emphasize individual items, you can add measure words:

太多个冰淇淋 – “too many (individual) ice creams” (e.g., cones, cups).
太多块巧克力 (kuài) – “too many pieces/bars of chocolate”.

Both ways are correct; the original sentence simply focuses on overall amount, not on counting pieces.

What exactly is 和 (hé) doing here? Could I use 跟 (gēn) instead? What’s the difference?

In this sentence, 和 is just the coordinating conjunction “and” connecting two nouns:

冰淇淋和巧克力 = “ice cream and chocolate”.

About 和 vs. 跟:

In many everyday contexts, 和 and 跟 can both mean “and” when linking nouns:
- 冰淇淋跟巧克力 is also fine in speech.
和 is a bit more neutral / formal and is very common in writing.
跟 often feels a bit more colloquial and also strongly used for “with” (e.g., 跟他一起 = “together with him”).

So here, 和 is the standard, safe choice; 跟 is possible in casual spoken Chinese.

Who is the subject of 觉得 (juéde) here? Why isn’t 孩子 or 他 / 她 repeated before 觉得?

The subject of 觉得 is still 孩子 (the child):

Full, explicit version: 孩子吃了太多冰淇淋和巧克力，(孩子)觉得肚子很不舒服。
Chinese frequently drops repeated subjects when it’s obvious from context.

Because the first clause already tells us 孩子 is doing the eating, and there is no subject change signaled, the listener automatically understands that the same person (the child) is the one who feels uncomfortable.

How does 觉得 (juéde) work grammatically? Is it more like “to think” or “to feel”?

觉得 can mean “to feel” or “to think / to have the impression that” depending on context. Its basic pattern is:

觉得 + sentence / clause
- 我觉得这个电影很好看。 = “I think this movie is very good.”
觉得 + (很) + adjective
- 我觉得很累。 = “I feel very tired.”

In your sentence, 觉得肚子很不舒服 is “(the child) feels that (their) stomach is very uncomfortable”. It’s about a bodily sensation, so in English we’d normally translate it with “feel”, but grammatically it still takes a whole clause after it.

Why do we say 肚子很不舒服 instead of just 肚子不舒服? What is 很 (hěn) doing before 不舒服?

很 has two roles here:

Grammatical “linker” before adjectives as predicates
In Chinese, when an adjective follows a subject as a state (not a comparison), we usually insert 很 or another degree word:
- 肚子不舒服 is possible, but in many contexts, 肚子很不舒服 sounds more natural and complete.
Expressing degree / emphasis
很不舒服 usually suggests the discomfort is quite strong, more like “really / very uncomfortable”.

So 肚子不舒服 = “(the) stomach is uncomfortable”, neutral.
肚子很不舒服 = “(the) stomach is really quite uncomfortable”, with both natural-sounding structure and stronger feeling.

What exactly does 不舒服 (bù shūfu) mean? Is it “sick”, “in pain”, or just “uncomfortable”? How is it different from 生病, 难受, or 疼?

不舒服 literally means “not comfortable”, and it’s often used for feeling unwell in a general way:

It can cover mild illness, discomfort, or feeling “off”:
- 我今天有点儿不舒服。 = “I don’t feel so well today.”
It doesn’t specify whether it’s pain, nausea, tiredness, etc.

Compare:

生病 (shēngbìng) – “to be ill / to fall sick”: more like a clear illness.
难受 (nánshòu) – “to feel awful / to suffer / to be in (emotional or physical) discomfort”: stronger, often more intense or miserable.
疼 (téng) – “to hurt / to be painful”: focuses specifically on pain.

In your sentence, 肚子很不舒服 suggests the stomach feels bad (maybe too full, aches a bit, or feels upset) without specifying the exact symptom.

Why is 肚子 (dùzi) used instead of 胃 (wèi)? What’s the difference between these two words?

Both relate to the area around the stomach, but:

肚子 = everyday word for belly / tummy / stomach area (informal, general).
胃 = the anatomical stomach organ (more medical / specific).

In daily conversation, if you say you ate too much and now your stomach doesn’t feel good, you almost always use 肚子:

肚子很不舒服。 – “My tummy/stomach feels bad.”

胃 tends to show up in more specific health contexts:

胃疼 – “stomach ache (organ itself)”.
胃病 – “stomach disease”.

So 肚子 here fits the casual, everyday tone.

There’s no “his / her” before 肚子. How do we know whose stomach it is? Do we need to say 他的肚子 or 她的肚子?

Chinese often omits possessive pronouns when the owner is obvious from context, especially for body parts and family members.

Here, we already know we are talking about 孩子, and no other person is mentioned.
So 肚子很不舒服 is naturally understood as “(the child’s) stomach is uncomfortable”.

You can say 他的肚子很不舒服 / 她的肚子很不舒服, but in this context it sounds a bit heavier / more explicit than necessary. The shorter version is more typical.

What does the 子 (zi) at the end of 孩子 (háizi) and 肚子 (dùzi) do? Does it mean anything by itself?

子 (zi) in these words is a common noun suffix:

Often, it doesn’t have a clear independent meaning; it helps form a disyllabic noun that sounds more natural in modern Mandarin.
孩 by itself is rarely used in everyday speech; we normally say 孩子 = “child”.
肚 exists as a character, but 肚子 is the usual spoken form for “belly / tummy”.

So in many words, 子 just makes the word feel complete and colloquial. You can’t normally drop it and still have a natural-sounding modern word.

Could we say 孩子吃了太多冰淇淋和巧克力，肚子很不舒服了 with 了 at the end of the sentence? How would the meaning change?

Yes, …肚子很不舒服了 is also grammatical, but the final 了 adds a nuance:

肚子很不舒服。 – simple description: “(The) stomach is really uncomfortable.”
肚子很不舒服了。 – suggests a change of state or new situation:
“Now (my/the child’s) stomach has become really uncomfortable (because of what just happened).”

So with the final 了, you emphasize that as a result of eating too much, the new situation is that the stomach is now very uncomfortable.

Is the word order 孩子　吃了　太多　冰淇淋和巧克力 fixed? Could I put 太多 somewhere else, like 孩子吃了冰淇淋和巧克力太多?

The natural word order is:

Subject + Verb + Quantity/degree + Object
孩子　吃了　太多　冰淇淋和巧克力

So 太多 goes before the nouns it modifies as a quantifier phrase: 太多冰淇淋和巧克力 (“too much ice cream and chocolate”).

孩子吃了冰淇淋和巧克力太多 is unnatural / wrong in standard Mandarin; it sounds like you misplaced the quantifier.
Think of 太多冰淇淋和巧克力 as a single “chunk”: [too-much ice-cream-and-chocolate].

So keep 太多 directly before the noun (or noun phrase) whose quantity it describes.

How do we pronounce 不 (bù) in 很不舒服 (hěn bù shūfu)? Does the tone change?

In 很不舒服, 不 (bù) keeps its regular fourth tone:

很不舒服 → hěn bù shūfu

The tone-change rule for 不 is:

When 不 (bù) is followed by another fourth tone, it changes to bú (second tone).
- e.g. 不是 = bú shì, not bù shì.

In 不舒服, 舒 (shū) is first tone, so 不 stays bù.
So the correct pronunciation is hěn bù shūfu.