Mandarin learning guide
Learn with《小时候的我们》
This guide follows the lyric’s movement from childhood vividness to later compromise, then back to a call to keep believing. The lines are useful for learning how Mandarin can shift between memory, reflection, and resolve.
What to listen for
The lyric opens with a remembered childhood world that feels vivid, direct, and unguarded, then turns toward later years marked by injury, compromise, regret, and conflict. It repeatedly asks what has been gained or lost, before returning to the idea that childhood bravery is still worth believing in and that wishes can begin again.
- Recognize how Mandarin expresses remembered states with time expressions like 小时候 and these years phrasing.
- Understand how the lyric contrasts simple childhood feeling with later compromise and regret.
- Learn reflective sentence patterns that ask what happened, what was lost, and what can still begin again.
How the song moves
Opening memory
The first lines describe childhood with waiting, color, instinct, and simple affection.
Mid-song reflection
The lyric shifts to wounds, compromise, regret, and conflict with loved ones.
Return and affirmation
The closing lines ask why childhood happiness is gone, then restate belief in childhood bravery and a restart of wishes.
Translation choices
哭是直觉的 笑是发自真心的
- Natural English
- Crying is instinctive, and laughing comes from the heart.
- Why
- This keeps the parallel structure of the Chinese line and matches the contrast between 哭 and 笑.
最后得到了什么 从哪一天开始不后悔
- Natural English
- What have you gained in the end? From what day did you stop regretting?
- Why
- The line is a pair of rhetorical questions, so the translation preserves both the outcome question and the time-of-change question.
要永远相信著 小时候的我们勇敢著
- Natural English
- Always believe that we were brave when we were young.
- Why
- The lyric asks the listener to keep believing, so this rendering keeps the persuasive tone and makes 小时候的我们 natural in English.
Useful Mandarin from the song
This creates a simple condition: if the feeling is there, the action follows. In the lyric, it leads directly to embracing without extra hesitation.
This vivid phrase describes damage or hardship in a strong, emotional way. In the lyric, it refers to years that have left the speaker marked by suffering.
This asks when a change began. It is useful for talking about the point at which a feeling, habit, or condition shifted.
Listen closely
- Listen for the repeated childhood anchor 小时候的我们 / 小时候的快乐, which frames the whole lyric.
- Notice how the rhythm changes when the lyric moves from short, direct memory lines to longer reflective questions.
- Pay attention to the repeated contrast between what was simple before and what later became compromise, regret, or conflict.
Check your understanding
Which line asks when regret stopped, and what kind of sentence is it?
Show answer
Line L0007; it is a rhetorical question with two linked questions.
What does 喜欢就 do in line L0004?
Show answer
It sets a condition meaning 'if you like it,' leading to the action that follows.