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!

Lesson 11 - How to Type in Chinese

Ever wondered how Chinese people type?  Do they have strange keyboards with keys for each stroke?  Not at all!  It's actually easier than you might think.

Chinese people use the exact same keyboard as in America, as opposed to other countries (like France where the keyboard is called "AZERTY" instead of "QWERTY").

To type Chinese characters, all you really need to do is to type the pinyin.  The options for which character you want to include come up below and you select your option.

If you don't already have Chinese available to you easily on your computer, you can follow the easy steps on this site (it shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes to set it up).

For Windows:
http://www.wikihow.com/Add-Another-Language-to-Your-Computer-Keyboard

For Mac:
http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Keyboard-Language-of-a-Mac

Here is an example of what you would do to type 你好.

Something to keep in mind is that typing a spacebar selects the highlighted option.  If you want, say, option number 4, you can do several things.  You can use the arrow keys to move to the side or you can type "4" on your keyboard and it will be selected.

What if your option is not in the first 9 characters?  All you need to do is press on the "down" arrow key to go to the next "page" of characters below.

Another great thing about typing in Chinese is that you don't need to worry about those tricky tones!  You just need to know how to spell the word.  You still need to know tones for conversation purposes, so don't completely ignore them, but this cuts you some slack.  

Say you want to write a long sentence.  Do I have to select each word individually?  Nope!  If your are lucky, you can type an entire sentence with only one selection.  Here's an example:

Can you remember what this means?

Like always, the best way to learn is to practice, so make sure you practice using this once in a while to get the hang of it.  At first you may be really slow, but worry not!  You are sure to get much faster.

Exercise:

Try typing this in Chinese with your new keyboard settings.

- My name is 小王 (xiao3 wang3).

- My dog's name is 小黑 (xiao3 hei1).

- How are you?

Best of luck!

Answers to exercise (no peeking!):

- 我叫小王。

- 我的狗的名字是小黑。

- 你好吗？

Family

Family members are sort of important, wouldn't you agree?  So let's learn how to talk about them!  Let's start off with some basic vocab:

家庭 jia1 ting2

family

爸爸 ba4 ba5

dad

妈妈 ma1 ma5

mom

哥哥 ge4 ge5

older brother

弟弟 di4 di5

younger brother

姐姐 jie3 jie5

older sister

妹妹 mei4 mei5

younger sister

爷爷 ye2 ye5

father's dad

奶奶 nai3 nai5

father's mom

外公 wai4 gong1

mother's dad

外婆 wai4 po2

mother's mom

You probably noticed that there are different words for grandparents depending on whose parents they are.  China is one of those countries with tons of names just for family members, although you don't need to know all of them in order to get by.  Just knowing the ones above is enough.

Another important thing to notice is that often, the names are repeats of the same word, only the second time, the tone becomes neutral.  Chinese people realize it is hard to say the same tone twice in a row (especially third tone!).  So they have agreed that the repeated word would use the neutral tone to make it easier to pronounce instead of whatever other tone it may be using.  

In fact, since this is the correct way to pronounce these words, don't try to overachieve, since native Chinese speakers will look at you funny.  (Exactly what happened to me!)  If you want to sound more like a native, make sure to use the neutral tone.

Want a cool exercise?  Try to name all the members in the families in the pictures above!  See if you can do it again, but this time while covering the list.  Can you do it?  

If you want how to address someone I didn't mention here, check out this fun website!

http://www.mandarintools.com/family.html

再见！

Lesson 10: Possessives

How would you say, "This is mine," or, "Don't touch that, it's his!"?  You can only say sentences like these with the use of possessives.

Just to clear things up a little, possessives are all the words that say that something belongs to someone, like "mine," "his," "theirs," and so on.  They do not include the verb "to have."  That will be for a later lesson.

In English, possessives can be quite confusing, since the word "me," when changed to the possessive (mine) looks almost nothing the original!  Even weirder is that there is a completely different rule for each pronoun.  So you can't say "theine" for the possessive of "they."

Thank goodness it's much easier in Chinese.  Are you ready for it?  All you do is you use your pronoun followed by the character 的 (de5).  There's got to be more to it.  It can't possibly be that easy.  Nope, that's just about it.  Ready for some examples?

这是我的猫。

zhe4 shi4 wo3 de5 mao1

This is my cat.

狗是他的。

gou3 shi4 ta1 de5

The dog is his.

这是我家。

zhe4 shi4 wo3 jia1

This is my family.

Notice something strange?  There is no 的 (de5) in this sentence!  What happened?  Whenever you want to talk about family, you don't use the word 的 (de5).  You just skip it.  If you were to say 这是我的家 (zhe4 shi4 wo3 de5 jia1), it would mean this is my house (house and family are the same word).  So just remember that whenever you want to talk about family, you need to omit that word.  Here's another example:

她是我妹妹。

zhe4 shi4 wo3 mei3 mei5

She is my younger sister.

Does that make sense?  If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.  I hope that was helpful!

Lesson 9: Plurals

Do you want to hear some great news?  Chinese has no distinction for plurals!!!  That means that whether a word is singular (dog) or plural (dogs) makes no difference!  For instance:

狗 - (gou3) dog

is the same thing as

狗 - (gou3) dogs

This is what I mean when I say that Chinese grammar is really not that bad!  How wonderful is that?

So how do you tell whether you're talking about only one dog or a group of dogs?  That's when your pronouns come in real handy.  (Check out this page to refresh your pronouns)  

Assuming I'm still talking about dogs, if I say: 

它叫小狗 - (ta1 jiao4 xiao3 gou3) His name is Small Dog.

am I referring to one or many dogs?  How about here:

它们是我的 - (ta1 men2 shi4 wo3 de5) They are mine.

It's really not that difficult after all!  You can now shove that burden off.  Woohoo!

Lesson 8: What is Your Name?

你好！ Finally we're getting back to the language.  Are you ready?

Today we will learn how to introduce ourselves.  It's quite simple.  Here is what you say:

我叫(your name)。
(wo3 jiao4_____.)

That's it!  Just two words followed by your name.  As we already know, 我(wo3) means "I."  叫(jiao4) simply means "to be called" and is a verb.

If you want to look at the second character based on its radicals, you can observe the 口(kou3) or mouth on the left of it.  You use your mouth to call someone, so it makes sense to have this radical there!

Literally, you are saying, "I am called _____."  Simple, right?

If you want to ask someone their name say this:

你叫什么名字？
(ni3 jiao4 shen2 me5 ming2 zi5?)

This is a little bit more complex, but let's break it down.  We already know that 你(ni3) means "you" and that 叫(jiao4) means "to be called."  什么(shen2 me5) means "what," so can you guess what 名字(ming2 zi5) means?  Name!  That's right!

You are literally saying, "You are called what name?"

Hopefully that makes sense.  Here is a good video you can look at. Try to understand as much as you can.  Good luck and 再见！

Chinese New Year - Vocab

新年快乐！ (xin1 nian2 kuai4 le4)  Here are some great words and phrases to know for Chinese New Year!  Let's begin!

春节 - (chun1 jie2) Chinese New Year

新 - (xin1) new

年 - (nian2) year

快乐 - (kuai4 le5) happy

红 - (hong2) red

火 - (huo3) fire

年兽 - (nian2 shou4) the name of the new year monster

鞭炮 - (bian1 pao4) firecracker

灯笼 - (deng1 long2) lantern

红包 - (hong2 bao1) red envelopes

庆祝 - (qing4 zhu4) celebrate

You probably noted that 新年快乐 is literally "New Year Happy."  In fact, this order goes for most wishes for holidays.  To say, "Happy Birthday," you actually say 生日快乐 (sheng1 ri4 kuai4 le4).  Can you guess what the word for birthday is?  生日 (sheng1 ri4)!  Good job!  

Why doesn't 春节 include the word 年 or 新?  That's a very good question.  The word literally means, "spring festival."  (春 = spring, 节 = festival/holiday)  

新年快乐！ I hope that way helpful!

Chinese New Year - The Story Behind It

新年快乐！(xin1 nian2 kuai4 le4) Happy Chinese New Year!

This is probably the most important festival in China.  It goes according to the lunar calendar, so if you were wondering why it did not fall on January 1st, that' why!  

This festival also has a very interesting story that can explain a lot about Chinese culture.  Here we go!

According to legend, there was a terrible monster that would come out of the sea on New Year's Eve to bring terror to the nearby villages.  It would eat and kill children and adults alike.  So the Chinese would go up to the mountain top to stay safe.

One year, an old woman refused to go up the mountain.  She was too weak to go and was approaching the end of her life anyway.  Reluctantly, the villagers left her behind and set off for the mountain peak.  

As the sun was setting, the old woman started to get cold, so she built a fire and huddled by it.  The gentle crackle of the flames reassured her.  

Then the old woman heard a sound.  When she looked up to see where it came from she laid eyes on the monster.  He was approaching and he had spotted her.  

Chinese people buying fireworks

Yet when the monster arrived near her, it pounced away and disappeared back to where it came from. The old woman was puzzled.  She certainly could not have frightened it.  As she looked back at the fire, she realized that it had frightened the monster away.  

She had discovered the three things that the monster dreaded: light, crackling sounds, and the color red.  This is why to this day, Chinese people like the color red so much.  On New Year's Eve, the tradition is to put as much red everywhere as possible.  They also light many fire crackers and keep the lights on all night to frighten the monster.  

Chinese couplet
Can you read what it says?

Another thing done is to place something called "couplets" on your door.  You will typically have two and sometimes three.  You place one on each side of the door going down vertically and if you have a third one, it will go horizontally go on top.  The couplets are usually 4 characters long each.  

Hopefully this holiday makes more sense now!  新年快乐！

Lesson 7: Pinyin

好久不见！你好吗？(hao3 jiu3 bu2 jian4!  ni3 hao3 ma5?)  Are you ready for another lesson?  Great!

Pinyin is the system of writing Chinese in letters that westerners can pronounce, also know as romanization.  It tells you how to pronounce a character.  For instance, the Pinyin for 你好 is ni3 hao3.

Typically the tone for the syllable will be written over the vowel that it impacts (when there is more than one vowel like in "hao").  However, I am not able to do that on this blog, so I will indicate tones at the end of the syllable by the number that follows it.

For the most part, the letters you see are pronounced that way, but once in a while you have exceptions.

Whenever you see a "c" in Pinyin, it is pronounced like a hard "ts" sound.  So "菜 cai4" would be pronounced "tsai4" and NOT "kai4."

A "z" in Pinyin is pronounced like a "dz" in English.  So the "zai4" in 再见 is literally pronounced "dzai."

The sounds for "q" and "ch" are just like the "ch" in the English word "chew," but the vowels are pronounced differently for each.  For example, "qi" is pronounced "chee" like "cheese," but "chi" is pronounced "chir," like "fir tree."

There are two "u" sounds in Chinese: one is like in the word "sue" and the other is like the French "u" sound and is depicted by a ü in Chinese.  So if you see "u" pronounce it like "oo" and if you see "ü" pronounce it like the French "u".  There is however, one exception to this: if a "u" follows a "y" or a "q" in Chinese, it will be pronounced like a French "u".

There are other such exceptions, but for the most part, it is straightforward.  If you have any trouble pronouncing a word, look up the pronunciation on Google Translate or you can leave a comment below and I will do my best to explain.

Good luck! 再见！

Lesson 6: Traditional vs. Simplified

你好！China has two systems of writing Mandarin: traditional and simplified.  Like implied by their names, simplified is a shorthand way of writing traditional.  In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese government encouraged the use of simplified characters in order to increase literacy rates in the country.  Today, mainland China uses simplified characters predominantly and Taiwan uses traditional.

Which one is better to learn?

Since mainland China has a larger influence on the rest of the world and since these are seemingly simpler and easier to learn, simplified Chinese has become the choice of many people.  Yet, I would advocate that it be best to learn both since there is rarely a large difference between the two and such knowledge allows you a tremendous amount of flexibility.

To simplify these characters, certain radicals were changed, not the entire word (what are radicals?).  So if you know those radicals, you should be able to decipher most words that have variations.

An example of such a variation is as follows (do you recognize the words?):

Simplified: 请, 谢谢

Traditional: 請, 謝謝

As you can see, the only difference is in the radical on the left.  Can you still see some similarity between the two radicals, though?  The radicals still mean the same thing (speech), despite their differing appearances.

Another great thing: not all Chinese words have a form for each system.  So words like 我(wo3) and 你(ni3) are the same in both systems!

On this blog, I will use only simplified Chinese, since it is the most widely spoken and commonly used, especially if you plan to visit mainland China at some point.

I hope that was helpful.  This can be a confusing topic so if you have any questions, just leave a comment below.

Keep up the great work!  再见！

Lesson 5: Radicals

你好！So what are these radicals?  They have nothing to do with politics, rest assured.

A radical (in Chinese terms) is just a part of a character.  Some characters are made up of only one radical, while others are made of four!  Yet what's great about these radicals is that they help break up characters so that they are easier to understand and remember.

Each radical has a meaning that has somehow led to the formation of that character.

The following video gives a great explanation and examples of radicals.  Make sure to check it out!

If you are having trouble playing this video, click here to go directly to it.

How was that?  Was it helpful?  Another great thing about this video is that it shows the best way to learn characters: by visualizing things.  I believe this is the only way to learn Chinese characters fast and effectively.  A fantastic website that I have been using which teaches you vocabulary in this manner is Memrise.com.  I highly recommend it.

再见！

Lesson 3: Tones

Here are all the tones:

1st Tone: Your voice is level and stays on a single note for the whole syllable.  People often do the mistake of setting this note too high, making it harder to pronounce that it really is.  This should feel like a comfortable tone.

2nd Tone: Your voice rises.  This is often compared to in English when you raise the pitch of your voice at the end of a question like in this instance: "You went to be at 2 o'clock?"  A common mistake is to start too low that the sound becomes really hard to make with the amount of breath that you have.  

3rd Tone: Your voice lowers, then rises.  This can be one of the trickiest tones, along with 2nd tone for many learners.  It will start level, then go down, and then back up like 2nd tone.  There is more emphasis on the "going up" half.

4th Tone: Your voice cascades down.  Ever heard that Chinese sounds like people are constantly getting angry with each other?  This tone is where it come from!  In fact, the word 爱 ai4 means "love" and is in this tone!  So when saying this tone, think of saying something as if you were angry.

5th Tone: This tone does not have a way of pronunciation.  I think the best way to explain this is that you rush the syllable or just breathe it out.  This tone is usually seen at the end of a sentence or expression such as with 太贵了! (tai4 gui4 le5) "too expensive" or 你好吗? (ni3 hao3 ma5) "how are you?"  This is the tone with which you have the most freedom.  Since it usually comes at the end of the phrase or sentence, whatever breath you have left is just let go for this tone.  

A good tip when you are first trying to practice tones is moving your finger in the way you want your voice to go.  For instance, to say 你好, your finger would go down, up, down, and up.  Keep in mind that the "lines" you make with your finger don't need to be "connected."  Otherwise, consecutive 2nd tones or 4th tones would be really hard to make!  Just start fresh with each new syllable.

A question I often get asked is how to distinguish 2nd tone from 3rd tone since they end in the same way, and like I said earlier for 3rd tone, the emphasis is on the part that rises, making it nearly identical to 2nd tone.  The best way that I've found to look at this problem is that 3rd tone takes a lot longer to say, it almost sounds like two syllables, while 2nd tone is just like one and goes by quickly.  For 3rd tone, you need to make a conscious effort to go down and up.  

Practice! Try saying these sentences with the best tones that you've got so far.

你好 (ni3 hao3) hello

我爱你 (wo3 ai4 ni3) I love you

太贵了 (tai4 gui4 le5) too expensive

好久不见 (hao3 jiu3 bu2 jian4) long time no see

很好 (hen2 hao3) very good

Wow, that was a lot!  Make sure that you put this knowledge to use as soon as possible since it is very important in learning Chinese.  Try to detect tones in this video.  Good luck and have fun!  再见！

Lesson 4: Pronouns

你好!  Pronouns, if you aren't already aware, are words like "I, you, he, she, etc."  Kind of important.  So let's get right to it!

我

我 - (wo3) I / me

你 - (ni3) you (singular)

他 - (ta1) he

她 - (ta1) she

它 - (ta1) it (typically animals)

我们

我们 - (wo3 men2) we

你们 - (ni3 men2) you (plural)

他们 - (ta1 men2) they (at least one male in group)

她们 - (ta1 men2) they (all female)

它们 - (ta1 men2) they

You probably noticed that he, she and it have the same pronunciation, just like the plurals of these forms: they.  So how on earth are you expected to discern between each in spoken language?  The answer is found in context.  In English, you don't just start a random conversation talking about "He ate a whole bag of chips the other day."  You'd be wondering who is this "he?"  Instead, you would start with something like "My brother ate a whole bag of chips and he went to the gym the next day."  Chinese is similar in this sense.

If you spend time around Chinese people speaking English, you may have heard them accidentally referring to a girl as a "he!"  This mistake most likely comes from this part of their language.  It all adds up now, doesn't it?

If in spoken language the 他(ta1)，她(ta1)，and 它(ta1) are the same, then what about in written language?  In that case you need to make sure that you address the gender properly.  A good rule of thumb is that masculine takes it all: if there is one man amongst a hundred girls and you want to refer to them all (as "they"), then you will use 他们(ta1 men2) instead of 她们(ta1 men2).

You also may have noticed that to all the plural pronouns, we added 们 (men2) to the end of the singular pronoun to make it plural.  Doesn't that make Chinese a lot easier?  Yipee!

Practice: Try to make sense of these sentences:

她 is my girlfriend.

我们 want to eat out as a family.

你 just ran a marathon!

你好吗？(look back to Lesson 1 if you need a hint)

谢谢你 (look back to Lesson 1 if you need a hint)

Lesson 2: Intro to Tones

One of biggest reasons why people shy away from Chinese is because of its tones.  They hear terrifying stories you can accidentally call your mother a horse if you are not careful.

According to my adventures, tones really are not to be too feared for three important reasons:

1. Context: Don't you think you would know whether you were referring to a horse or your mother? 
2. Like anything, it is entirely possible to train your ear and mouth to say them well with enough practice and dedication.
3. Plus, there's already so much to worry about in life, and tones should not add to that pile.

So even if at first you have some trouble with your tones, your listeners will be forgiving for both the first reason and the fact that it is to be expected that a beginner will have a hard time with tones.  So make sure that you keep working on tones, but don't let that discourage you.  

Alright, Chinese has five tones.  They look like this (some people say this looks like a ride along a mountain):

_  /  \/  \

Notice that I only drew 4 lines instead of 5.  The reason is because fifth tone is considered a "neutral tone." I will explain later.  Until then 再见！

Lesson 1: The Essentials

你好！(Hello!)  I'm so glad that you want to learn this great language! So let's get started!

Below are a list of basic conversational phrases that you can start using from day 1.  Try to practice these as often as possible, as that is the only way to get better.  Here we go: your first Chinese words!


你好 - (ni3 hao3) hello

你好吗？ - (ni3 hao3 ma5) how are you?

我很好 - (wo3 hen2 hao3) I am very good

请 - (qing3) please

对不起 - (dui4 bu4 qi3)

谢谢 - (xie4 xie4) thank you

不客气 - (bu2 ke4 qi4) you are welcome

认识你很高兴 - (ren4 shi4 ni3 hen2 gao1 xing4) nice to meet you

再见 - (zai4 jian4) goodbye


Phew!  That was a lot!  Don't worry if it seems overwhelming at first.  Trust me, it will soon make sense.

Congratulations!  You just got through your first lesson of Chinese!  If you can, the next time you see a Chinese person, walk up to them and say "你好!"  I guarantee you they will be very impressed and really happy to hear that someone is trying to learn their language.  I would say that is the best part about learning Chinese––since it seems so foreign, it is very quickly very rewarding.  Saying "谢谢" is a lot more cool than saying "Gracias."

Keep up the great work! 再见！