Be able to in Chinese
to be able to · HSK 1
能
他一次能吃三碗饭。 He can eat three bowls of rice at once.
Other ways to say be able to
More words with 能
How do you say be able to in Chinese?
Be able to in Chinese is 能 (néng). You can also say 能够 (néng gòu), 得以 (dé yǐ), 了 (liǎo).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
The CC-CEDICT dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.