Help me to understand the grammar of this sentence, please.

[webmagnets]

Gen1 shei2 zuo4 peng2you, ye3 bi4bushang4 gen Shang4di4 zuo4 peng2you na4me hao3.

I think it means: Making friends with God can't be compared to making friends with anyone else.

I am having trouble with the some of the words:

How does "shei2" make sense in this sentence?

What about the phrase "na4me hao3"? What does it mean?

Also, why is the word "ye3" included?

[muyongshi]

shei2 谁 is used in statements to mean "anyone" or "someone". Basically its a filler word that is the subject that can mean other people, or some specific unnamed person{s}.

Na me hao would be "that good" so na me 那么 is used for emphasis.

ye3 也 is also used for emphasis.

[Guoke]

Gen1 shei2 zuo4 peng2you, ye3 bi4bushang4 gen Shang4di4 zuo4 peng2you na4me hao3.

跟谁做朋友，也比不上跟上帝做朋友那么好。

Gen1 shei2 (跟谁) = with who(m)ever

ye3 （也） = dou1 （都） = all

bi4bushang4 ...... na4me hao3 (比不上....那么好） = not as good as ....

[webmagnets]

Gen1 shei2 (跟谁) = with who(m)ever

ye3 （也） = dou1 （都） = all

bi4bushang4 ...... na4me hao3 (比不上....那么好） = not as good as ....

Could someone please give me three simple example sentences, each using one of the three concepts above?

[renzhe]

Like Gouke said, 谁 and 也 belong together here, as a part of the 谁 ... 也 construction. Well, not directly, but the meaning of 谁 changes because of the 也 in the following sentence. Think of a sentence like 谁也比不上我爸爸, which is essentially the same thing.

Chinese has a specific way to say "every-" and no-":

谁 = who

谁也 / 谁都 = everybody

谁也不... / 谁都不... = nobody

Similarly,

什么 = what

什么也 / 什么都 = everything

什么也不... / 什么都不... = nothing

Then you also have the 没有 ... (那么) + adj, or in this case 比不上....那么好, which is another typically Chinese formulation to say that something isn't as good as something else.

So, in terms of understanding the grammar, I'd try to understand it as: "Making friends with someone (else) is not as good as making friends with the Lord."

Perhaps this will help you understand the different uses of 谁:

你是谁? = who are you? 谁 is an interrogative pronoun

谁都知道 = everybody knows. 谁都 = 谁也 = everybody

谁都不知道 = nobody knows. 谁都 = everybody + 不 = negation -> nobody

谁对我好，我对谁好 = Lit. "Who is good to me, I am good to them". Or "If someone is nice to me, I'm nice to them". 谁 has two functions here, first one is to refer to somebody unspecified, the second one refers to the same person mentioned in the first sentence.

[webmagnets]

Thank you for your help.

Is there any kind of reference I could have used to look that stuff up myself, besides just reading a grammar book from cover to cover until I came across it?

[renzhe]

Perhaps, I really don't know. This is how I understand it, and I learned it by following a good textbook and reading a lot. Perhaps it's not even 100% correct, but that's the way I understand it.

If you're not following a textbook, I strongly suggest you finish an intermediate-level textbook which will introduce the relevant concepts in context. There is simply no way to know from seeing "比不上" that it's a verb+不+complement construction, if you haven't learned that there are actually such constructions. Same thing with 谁 + 也. You'd never figure out that they belong together, so I don't think a grammar book alone will help there.

Here is an excerpt from a good textbook addressing one aspect of using complements. By the time you get to intermediate level, you'll have covered most of the grammar points, so you can recognise them when you see them.