"What's in the refrigerator?"
Translation:冰箱里有什么？
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In Chinese, location comes first in the sentence, if not immediately then after the subject. It's just what sounds natural to them, I don't make the rules.
That's true for location modifiers, but not for location predicates. 在 is the main verb in mawmawile's question.
You can ask a native Chinese speaker, I believe the location should come first. I found a website that gave word order as:
subject, when (time), where, action
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Can someone please explain why “ 里 ” is located where it is in the sentence? Is "牛奶在冰箱里“ written correctly?
As far as I can tell here, a better English translation should have been, "The fridge has inside what?" I know it's not proper English, but I've noticed a lot of time that if you think in almost a stereotype-like broken English, the sentence structure makes more sense.
This is known as back-translation and is a useful tool in linguistics to see sentence structures and check translation work.
Or even better: "The inside of the refrigerator has what?", as li is part of the subject.
I have some background in Mandarin Speaking from Pimsleur. Otherwise I would have very little understanding of these classes. Wont they scare a person with no prior knowledge of Chinese?
里 is attached to 冰箱. You can think of 冰箱里 as one phrase meaning "in the refrigerator".
Yes, your sentence is correct.
Please why do we have to put "you" in this sentence? (with the second tone on the o... I don't know how to write it on my phone)
有 （yǒu, third tone) is use as: there is.
A literal translation of the characters is: refrigerator inside there is what
If you forget about the question aspect (吗), consider the following : 牛奶在冰箱里 vs 冰箱里有牛奶 / the milk is in the fridge vs the fridge contains (has) milk
No. In your sentence there is no verb. Zai is not functioning as a verb in your sentence.
You can use it only When you know something is in The fridge, But don't know what it is. And you should use 在冰箱里的是什么？You have to put a 的 behind adverb/Adjective to make it a Subject/Object.
Thanks. You have provided me with another grammar tip, I had not understood before.
No. Word order is very important to the grammar. That means roughly "What possesses the inside of a refrigerator?"
Location+有+Thing means "There is Thing at Location." This is how 有 is used to show location.
The order is incorrect and wouldn't make sense to a Chinese speaker. When talking about locations, you need to say 'place/thing's side' or in this case 'the refrigerator's inside (place)'. The way you phrase this, the fridge belongs to 'inside' whatever or wherever that is. That's why your answer won't work.
Your sentence meaning is something like: "what is the fridge of inside?" Now can you see why it is not a correct answer ?
Important note: Our question is "what...is inside" We can't use 是什么, because that means "what is..." We just want to ask what, not what is. Our word "is" belongs to "inside".
冰箱里有什么? My science experiment - mouldy cultures on Moo Goo Gai Pan take away.