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Chinese grammar

只有…才…

Only if … will …

A necessary condition.

In stories

  1. “只有老邻居才叫这儿‘七楼’。

    七楼 · 第十三天 · The Seventh Floor, Episode 13: Not His Parcels HSK 3

  2. 只有醒过来，才恍然大悟：“哦，原来是一场梦。”

    庄周梦蝶 · Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, and what it means HSK 5

  3. 民间有一种说法：过去，只有去世的人，才会脚朝着门躺着。

    风水是什么？ · What is feng shui? HSK 6

  4. 关于故宫，还流传着一个说法：它一共有九千九百九十九间半房子，因为只有天帝的宫殿才能有一万间，皇帝不敢超过。

    紫禁城为什么叫紫禁城？ · Why is it called the Forbidden City? HSK 5

Read 七楼 · 第十三天

What does 只有…才… mean in Chinese?

Only if … will …. A necessary condition.

How common is 只有…才…?

It comes up in 4 readings of the 392 stories and articles in our free Library.

Does it correct my mistakes?

No. It shows which patterns a text uses and what each one does; it doesn’t mark errors. Paste a sentence you wrote to see whether it uses the pattern you meant.

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Patterns found by our own parser; lines from our free Library.