To Marry Somebody in Chinese

In Chinese, there is a saying “男婚女嫁 nán hūn nǚ jià”, literally “a man and a woman getting married”. Marriage is a big event in everyone’s life. Today, we will learn how to say “to marry your Mr or Miss Right” in mandarin Chinese.

In English, when we want to say “somebody is getting married with another person”, we simply use one word “to marry” despite the gender. E.g. Lily is to marry Jack. Jack is to marry Lily. In Chinese, however, we use different words “to marry a man” and “to marry a woman”.

To marry a man, we use “嫁jià”. To marry a woman, we use “娶qǔ”. Both of these two characters mean “to marry” in Chinese.

Usage of 嫁

We usually put “给ɡěi” after “嫁jià” in order to say “to marry a man”. “给” literally means “to give” in Chinese, but here “给” doesn’t carry a specific meaning. We can simply imagine that “to marry a man” is like “giving a gift to him”, isn’t it?

E.g.

wǒ yào jiàɡěi jiékè.

我 要 嫁给 杰克。

I want to marry Jack.

Having said that, when the person you want to marry doesn’t refer to a specific person, there is no need to add “给”.

E.g.

tā yào jià rén le.

她 要 嫁 人 了。

She is getting married.

Usage of 娶

The sentence pattern “to marry a woman” is” “S + 娶 + O”.

E.g.

tā yào qǔ nàɡè nǚhái’ér

他 要 娶 那个 女孩儿。

He wants to marry that girl.

However, to express “a man is getting married“, you can’t say “他要娶人了 tā yào qǔ rén le”, which sounds a little weird in Chinese. Instead, we can say “他要结婚了tā yào jiéhūn le”, meaning “He is getting married.”