(T): Traditional characters; (S): Simplified characters. Ordinal numbers are formed by adding in front of a cardinal number. Voice In Teochew passive construction, the agent phrase by somebody always has to be present, and is introduced by either (some speakers use or instead) or , even though it is in fact a zero or indefinite agent as in: While in Mandarin one can have the agent introducer or alone without the agent itself, it is not grammatical to say cf. Mandarin ) Instead, we have to say: Even though this is unknown. The agent phrase always comes immediately after the subject, not at the end of the sentence or between the auxiliary and the past participle like in some European languages (e.g. German, Dutch) Comparison Comparative construction with two or more nouns Teochew uses the construction "X ADJ Y", which is believed to have evolved from the Old Chinese "X ADJ (yú) Y" structure to express the idea of comparison: Cantonese uses the same construction: However, due to modern influences from Mandarin, the Mandarin structure "X Y ADJ" has also gained popularity over the years. Therefore, the same sentence can be re-structured and becomes: cf. Mandarin Comparative construction with only one noun The - or -construction must involve two or more nouns to be compared; an ill-formed sentence will be yielded when only one is being mentioned: * (?) Teochew is different from English, where the second noun being compared can be left out ("Tatyana is more beautiful (than Lisa)". In cases like this, the -construction must be used instead: The same holds true for Mandarin and Cantonese in that another structure needs to be used when only one of the nouns being compared is mentioned. Teochew and Mandarin both use a pre-modifier (before the adjective) while Cantonese uses a post-modifier (after the adjective). Mandarin Cantonese There are two words which are intrinsically comparative in meaning, i.e. [ĩã5] "better" and [su1] "worse". They can be used alone or in conjunction with the -structure: Note the use of the adverbial [hoʔ2 tsoi7] at the end of the sentence to express a higher degree. Equal construction In Teochew, the idea of equality is expressed with the word [pẽ5] or [pẽ5 ĩõ7]: Superlative construction To express the superlative, Teochew uses the adverb [siaŋ5] or [siaŋ5 teŋ2]. is usually used with a complimentary connotation. Vocabulary The vocabulary of Teochew shares a lot of similarities