Help with when to use 的 / de

[u/unseasonedunflavored]

hi everyone!
i’m fairly new to learning mandarin and right now i’m exclusively using HelloChinese. this might be stupid but i really don’t understand the difference between using 的 and not using it. any help is appreciated thank you so much 谢谢🙏🏻

[u/brjosk]

(disclaimer: I am not fluent at all, but I did take a few years of Mandarin in high school)

I was taught that 的 signifies possession (like “hers” or “yours” or “Tim’s”)

I was also taught that it is sometimes omitted when speaking about someone close to you, like family members - “我爸爸” (but “我的爸爸” is also correct)

[u/unseasonedunflavored → u/brjosk]

okay so it seems like there are some rules for with whom or what you can use it with. thank you!

[u/lazier_garlic → u/unseasonedunflavored]

It's less likely to use it with family members (such as 我爸爸妈妈) and sometimes the explanation given is that you cannot be alienated or separated from them, unlike an inanimate object (我的手机) or a more conditional relationship.

It's not really a hard and fast rule. You can absolutely use 的 with family relations and it's not rude or anything. But most Mandarin speakers drop it so they teach that right away so that you're used to it. And it can be dropped in other circumstances too.

我的 means "my" or "mine" (it's "mine" when it's said by itself: 谁掉的钱包？那个钱包是我的。) but unlike English, it's not a grammatical error to use 我 alone as a modifier meaning "my". This can take some getting used to.

在他身边 or 在他的身边 by his side ~ the first one sounds better to me

however 我的身份 or 我身份 ~ I prefer the first one here just slightly. It means literally "my identity" or even more literally body-portion, like the old-fashioned English term "my portion" or lot in life; more idiomatically it means "who I am", my role or status in society.

You could said 他 can't be alienated from 身（身体）thus no 的, where as the 身 in 身份 is an inextricable part of a compound noun, and the noun semantically is something that can change--your status can change.

I wouldn't overthink it. While history shows us that the 的 is a late addition in the history of Mandarin, if it's easier, you can think of the basic form being pronoun+的 for possessive and some forms simply elide or drop the 的 since it's just a particle and those get de-stressed and dropped in all languages.

Also keep in mind the other loose "rule" - a Mandarin sentence abhors too many 的, especially in written form. Even the spoken language tends to not structure things that way. The only time you get it naturally is for comedic effect, like someone giving a "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" account of how they came by a piece of information.

[u/pigvwu → u/unseasonedunflavored]

I'd say that in your examples, there's not really a reason why it was used in the first one and not the second one. In both cases you could either use 的 or not use it depending on preference.

I'd say for writing (like in school or other more formal situations) you should always use 的, and for informal or spoken scenarios you can skip it.