Mandarin Chinese has three different particles which are pronounced de. The most common is the possessive de (?) particle, which is used in possessive pronouns (e.g. wo de = mine), as well as for emphasis.

Another fairly common de particle is ?, which is used to indicate adverbs. The adverbial de is used after an adjective or phrase to indicate the intention, manner or method that an action is done.

The character ? has two meanings. Beside being an adverbial marker, it also means earth or ground, and is found in compounds such as ?? (dì ban - floor) and ?? (dì qiú – the planet Earth).

Note that when the character ? is used to mean earth, the pronunciation is dì, but when used as an adverbial marker, the pronunciation should be de. You will sometimes hear the adverbial ? pronounced as dì, perhaps because the character is most commonly seen in compounds with the “earth” meaning.

Examples

Here are some examples of the adverbial de. Note that the adverb usually appears before the verb it modifies.

English	Pinyin	Traditional Characters	Simplified Characters
seriously	rèn zhen de	???	???
gently	qing qing de	???	???
very slowly	màn màn de	???	???
inwardly	àn de li	???	???