qǐng jīhuó tā.

to ask (politely)

Breakdown of qǐng jīhuó tā.

• 激活jīhuó: to activate
• 它tā: it

Questions & Answers about qǐng jīhuó tā.

What does 请 do in this sentence? Does it just mean please?

Yes—here 请 is being used to make the sentence polite, much like please in English.

So:

• 请激活它。 = Please activate it.

A useful thing to know is that 请 can also be a full verb in other contexts, meaning to invite or to request. But in this sentence, it is simply a politeness marker placed before the verb phrase.

Examples:

• 请坐。 = Please sit.
• 请看这里。 = Please look here.

Why is the word order 请 激活 它 and not something like 请它激活?

Mandarin word order here follows the basic pattern:

• 请 + verb + object

So:

• 请 = please
• 激活 = activate
• 它 = it

That gives:

• 请激活它。 = Please activate it.

If you said 请它激活, that would suggest please let it activate... or ask it to activate..., which is a very different structure. In the original sentence, 它 is the thing being activated, so it comes after the verb as the object.

What kind of word is 激活? Is it one word or two?