Lesson 15 - Question Words

Asking questions is an essential part of language learning, so why not learn how to ask them directly in Chinese?  Here are the most common forms of asking questions in China:

谁 (shei2) who

什么时候 (shen2 me5 shi2 hou4) when (literally: what time)

哪里 (na3 li3) where

什么 (shen2 me) what

为什么 (wei4 shen2 me5) why 

哪 (na3) which

You may have noticed that several of these words share characters, such as 哪 and 哪里 or 什么, 为什么, and 什么时候.  So it's that much easier to learn since you won't have to learn as many characters as you could have.  

Here are a few examples of when you would use these questions:

B knocks on A's door.

A: 谁呀？

B: 是我，你的朋友。

A: 你是哪一个朋友？B: 我是小李。

A: 请进！

B: 什么？

A: 我说：请进。

B: 对不起，我听不到。

A: 没问题。

Here is the translation:

A: Who is it?

B: It's me, your friend.

A: Which friend are you?

B: I am Little Li.

A: Please enter!

B: What?

A: I said: please enter.

B: Sorry, I didn't hear you.

A: No problem.

A few new words I introduced in this sentence are 请进 (qing2 jin4) please enter, 听 (ting1) to listen, and 到 (dao4) to arrive.  The expression 听不到 translates to "I don't hear you," even though it literally is "listening has not arrived."  

Other useful questions to know using the above words are:

厕所在哪里？

(ce4 suo3 zai4 na3 li3) 

Where is the restroom?

厕所 means restroom, while 在 means "to be located at" or more simply, "at."  It will be very useful when talking about locations and places.

你为什么学中文？ 

(ni3 wei4 shen2 me5 xue2 zhong1 wen2)  

Why are you learning Chinese?

你什么时候吃晚饭？

(ni3 shen2 me5 shi2 hou4 chi1 wan3 fan4)

When do you eat dinner?

Try making your own sentences.  The only way to learn a language is to use it.  If you get stuck, you now know how to ask for help!

20 Common Verbs

What's amazing about the Chinese language is that you don't need to learn any conjugations for the verbs.  You simply use the exact same verb for each tense.  The only thing you need to do to indicate which tense you're in is to add helpful words like 名天 (ming2 tian) "tomorrow" and 昨天 (zuo2 tian1) "yesterday," but that's for a later lesson.  Even better, most are only one character long!  Here we go!

学 

xue2

to study

吃

chi1

to eat

睡觉

shui4 jiao4

to sleep

读

du2

to read/study

买

mai3

to buy

卖

mai4

to sell

喜欢

xi3 huan1

to like

爱

ai4

to love

唱歌

chang4 ge1

to sing

跳舞

tiao4 wu3

to dance

玩

wan3

to play

听

ting1

to listen

说

shuo1

to speak

帮

bang1

to help

看

kan4

to see

跑步

pao3 bu4

to run

跳

tiao4

to jump

打

da3

to hit

做

zuo4

to do

把

ba3

to grab

Lesson 14 - Stroke Order

If you plan on learning Chinese, you'd better be familiar with stroke order.  Most people get intimidated by the fact that they not only have to learn new squigglies, but also the order in which to draw them.  What sort of torture is that?

Thank goodness it's not a curse, but a blessing.  If it weren't for stroke order, Chinese characters really would just be a bunch of chaotic scratches on the page.  Stroke order helps you remember the characters and make them look a lot nicer and more uniform.

Think of it this way: If you drew your boxes starting on the top right corner and going around counter clockwise while your friend started at the lower left and went clockwise, how similar would your boxes be?  (The Chinese way of drawing a box is as shown below.)

Stroke order generally follows the rule of top to bottom and then left to right.

An example of stroke order for
言 (yan2) speech.

The important part here is practicing.  With enough practice (and trust me, you'll be surprised at how fast you can pick it up), you don't even need someone to show you the stroke order.  You'll be able to accurately guess.  And if you switch the order of 2 strokes, big deal.  No one's watching you write, they just care about the end result.

Why else is it important to learn stroke order?  Ever wondered how the Chinese organize their characters into a dictionary?  That's right!  They organize it by the number of strokes.

Additionally, it can be really important to know stroke order if you want to find the meaning of a character.  Since Chinese does not have a phonetic alphabet, if you see a new character you would want to learn, but don't know the pinyin to type it and find out the meaning on Google translate, your only option at that point is to physically write out the character on a trackpad or similar device.  If you don't know your stroke order, it can be impossible to find the character you're after.

Here's a really good website to look up stroke order on any characters you're interested in learning.
http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html

Here is a list of characters that I think are worth learning right off the bat.  Their relative stroke orders are often confused.  Hopefully these can help you get started.

我 (wo3) I

这 (zhe4) this

女 (nü3/nv3) woman

加油！ Good luck!  If you have any questions (this stuff can be a little tricky at first), feel free to leave a comment below.

Lesson 13 - Numbers

The Chinese number system is actually a lot easier than the English one.  In fact, it almost reminds me of the Roman numeral system.  Let me list some numbers and you'll see what I mean:

一 (yi1) one

二 (er4) two

三 (san1) three

四 (si4) four

五 (wu3) five

六 (liu4) six

七 (qi1) seven

八 (ba1) eight

九 (jiu3) nine

十 (shi2) ten

As long as you know your numbers from 1 to 10, you can write out nearly every other number!  Here's how it works.

To write numbers 11-19, you just write the 十 followed by whatever digit you want for the ones place.  So 十七 would be 17 and 十二 would be 12.  Does that make sense?

For numbers that are multiples of 10 up to 90 (20, 30, 40...), you would put whatever tens digit you want followed by 十.  So 三十 would be 30 and 六十 would be 60.  Got that?

For all the other numbers from 21-99, you would combine the tens digit component (as seen right above) with the ones digit you want.  So 五十八 would be 58 and 四十一 would be 41.  It's very systematic.

The Chinese are very superstitious, and a lot has to do with the fact that if you change the tone of one word, it can mean a completely different one, whether good or bad.  For instance, if you change the tone for 四 from 4th to 3rd, it means death (死 si3).  So make sure to practice those tones!  For this reason, skyscrapers in China will very rarely have a 4th or 14th floor.  (How do you say 14 in Chinese again?)

I find that the best way to learn numbers in a new language is to just count as often as possible with the new numbers.  So for some practice, you can try counting the eggs (蛋 dan4) in the above pictures one at a time.  Happy learning!

Lesson 12 - How Are You?

好久不见！(Hao2 jiu3 bu2 jian4) Long time no see!

Today we are going to learn about how to carry out the most common starting point when learning any new language.  Here are a few phrases:

你好吗？ (ni2 hao3 ma5)  How are you?

Literally you + good + ? is the most common way to ask about someone's well-being.  You may have noticed that unlike what we would expect, 你 is not 3rd tone, but 2nd.  The reason is since it's just too hard to pronounce two third tones in a row.  So the first word will instead use second tone, while the latter word will keep its third tone.

好久不见 (hao2 jiu3 bu2 jian4) Long time no see.

The same rule applies here with the consecutive third tones, as you can see.  What is interesting here is that the English translation is the same as the Chinese literal translation, word for word.  It is important to note, however, that 久 is often used to refer to a longer span of time.

我很好，你呢？ (wo3 hen2 hao3, ni3 ne5?)  I am very good, and you?

呢 is an interesting particle in that it roughly translates to  "and what/how about this/you (or whatever the subject being referred to is)."  There is no direct equivalent in English, and yet this particle is essential to know in asking questions, as we will see later on.

我很累  (wo3 hen2 lei4)  I am very tired.

我很饿 (wo3 hen2 e4) I am very hungry.

我很高兴 (wo3 hen2 gao1 xing4)  I am very happy.

In case you noticed, there is a reason why I put 很 on nearly every single expression.  In fact, it sounds weird to natives if you don't put it there.  Other than that, I don't think there's any big reason for it's usage.

Hopefully these basic expressions will help you find your way around some basic Chinese conversations and allow you to showcase your skill in Chinese.  

So get out there and practice!  加油！(jia4 you3)  Good luck!