Listen to lesson:

Adam: This lesson is for those working in Taiwan or China in an office type environment. Some of these words may be advanced but if used in the right context, might still be useful to get your message across.

Unless you’re looking to become fluent, you probably don’t need to learn all these words, so just pick the ones that you think would be useful for your situation.

Let’s start with the word for office.

Kirin: 办公室.

Adam: Office

Kirin: 办公室.

Adam: So in an office type environment, you usually have a few different people working there. First, there might be a boss, who is the

Kirin: 老板.

Adam: Notice this word also has the character 老 for old in it, similar to 老师 which we learned in an earlier lesson means “teacher.”

Kirin: 老板.

Adam: The employees who work for the boss are the

Kirin: 员工

Adam: Employees

Kirin: 员工

Adam: If you are an employee at an office, your coworkers are your

Kirin: 同事

Adam: Coworkers

Your department might have a manager, who is a

Kirin: 经理

Adam: Manager

Kirin: 经理

Adam: Your boss might have a secretary who is a

Kirin: 秘书

Adam: Secretary

Kirin: 秘书

Adam: Now your actual job or work is called

Kirin: 工作

Adam: Work

Kirin: 工作

Adam: So if someone wanted to know what you do, they might ask

Kirin: 你的工作是工作什么

Adam: So literally that’s Your job is what. What’s your job?

Kirin: 你的工作是工作什么

Adam: Now lets say you wanted a job, you’d need to apply for one first. To apply is

Kirin: 申请

Adam: To apply

Kirin: 申请

Adam: So to apply for a job would be

Kirin: 申请工作

Adam: When applying for a job, they usually need to see your resume or CV, which is your

Kirin: 履历表

Adam: Resume or CV

Kirin: 履历表

Adam: If they like what they see, they might call you for an interview or a

Kirin: 面试

Adam: Interview

When meeting an interviewer, they usually give you their business card with both hands. Make sure you receive the card with both hands too.

Business card.

Kirin: 名片

Adam: Once you get the job, you’d have to agree on some salary or

Kirin: 薪水

Adam: Salary

Kirin: 薪水

Adam: Note that from some of your salary, you’ll need to pay some tax which is

Kirin: 税

Adam: Tax

Kirin: 税

Adam: After starting the job, you’d have to go through a training process.

Kirin: 训练

Adam: Training

Kirin: 训练

Adam: Work culture in Asia can be pretty demanding, frequently requiring overtime

Kirin: 加班

Adam: Overtime

Kirin: 加班

Adam: This in turn may give you lots of stress

Kirin: 压力

Adam: Stress

Kirin: 压力

Adam: Depending on your type of work, you may have to have a lot of meetings

Kirin: 开会

Adam: To have a meeting

Kirin: 开会

Adam: During the meeting, you may have various topics to discuss

Kirin: 讨论

Adam: Discuss

Kirin: 讨论

Adam: Now perhaps you were interested in doing business for yourself

Kirin: 做生意

Adam: To do business

Kirin: 做生意

Adam: The purpose of business of course is to make money

Kirin: 赚钱

Adam: Make money

One industry that is popular in Asia is the trade industry

Kirin: 贸易

Adam: Trade

Kirin: 贸易

Adam: This involves importing some products

Kirin: 进口

Adam: Importing

Kirin: 进口

Adam: And exporting other products

Kirin: 出口

Adam: Exporting

Kirin: 出口

Adam: How well a company does will depend on its revenue

Kirin: 收入

Adam: Revenue

Kirin: 收入

Adam: And expenses

Kirin: 费用

Adam: Expenses

Kirin: 费用

Adam: It might also depend on the economy

Kirin: 经济

Adam: Economy

Kirin: 经济

Adam: And support from the government

Kirin: 政府

Adam: Government

Kirin: 政府

Adam: This brings us to the end of our Chinese Basics course. I hope you found the material useful to you, to just give you a taste of what Chinese is all about. If you liked what you learned and would like to take the next step towards becoming fluent or functionally fluent, I recommend you sign up for a premium subscription on our site chinesetrack.com The premium course starts again from lesson 1, so there will be some review, but it will also fill in a lot of gaps that were skipped in the Chinese Basics course, which will take you a long ways towards becoming functionally fluent in the language, including a lot more resources for learning to read, type and even write characters, if that interests you. So check that out on our site chinesetrack.com If you have any questions about that course or any material on the site, feel free to use the contact us form on the site to get in touch. Thank you.

Listen to lesson:

Adam: For those of you planning to spend some time in China or Taiwan and who plan to enter the dating scene, it may be helpful to know some vocabulary related to this topic. Now this won’t cover every situation of course, but hopefully it’s still useful enough to get your message across. Pick and choose which words and phrases below you think would be most useful to you and focus on those.

Let’s begin with the word for girlfriend:

Kirin: 女朋友.

Adam: That is literally female followed by 朋友 which means friend. So together that gives us girlfriend

Kirin: 女朋友.

Adam: Similarly boyfriend would be

Kirin: 男朋友.

Adam: Which is male friend

Kirin: 男朋友.

Adam: So let’s set the scenario. You meet someone you like. You say hi, introduce yourself etc. It could be in person, or it might be online. Once the pleasantries have been completed, you want to go on a date with this person. Here’s the word for date:

Kirin: 约会.

Adam: That’s made up of two characters. The first one 约 means to agree on a time and the 会 is a meeting. So a date here is an agreed upon meeting.

Kirin: 约会.

Adam: So you could say something like

Kirin: 你要约会吗.

Adam: This literally means “You want date?” Do you want to go on a date?

Kirin: 你要约会吗.

Adam: From here, there may be a question of where to go. So here are some options. You might want to start with just going out for coffee. So you could say something like “Let’s go out for coffee.” If you listened to the lesson on restaurants, you should hopefully recognize a few of the words below.

Kirin: 我们去喝咖啡吧.

Adam: Let’s break this down for you. The first word is

Kirin: 我们

Adam: This means we, as in you and I

Kirin: 我们

Adam: We then have

Kirin: 去.

Adam: This is the verb to go.

Kirin: 去.

Adam: This is followed by

Kirin: 喝.

Adam: Which is the verb to drink.

Kirin: 喝.

Adam: Followed by

Kirin: 咖啡.

Adam: Which means coffee.

Kirin: 咖啡.

Adam: The last character

Kirin: 吧.

Adam: Is a suggestion particle. By adding it to the end of the sentence you’re turning the sentence into a suggestion.

Kirin: 我们去喝咖啡吧.

Adam: Let’s go out for coffee.

Kirin: 我们去喝咖啡吧.

Adam: Similarly, if you wanted to change the coffee to tea, this being Chinese culture after all, you could replace the kafei with cha for tea. Giving us

Kirin: 我们去喝茶吧.

Adam: After your coffee date, you may be ready to step things up to a meal. First we’ll learn the word to eat:

Kirin: 吃饭.

Adam: Literally that’s eat rice, but it’s used to mean eat any meal.

Kirin: 吃饭.

Adam: So you could say something like:

Kirin: 我要去吃饭.

Adam: Literally that’s “I want to go eat.”

Kirin: 我要去吃饭.

Adam: What are some other options you could do? In Taiwan and China, KTV is pretty popular. So you could suggest

Kirin: 唱歌.

Adam: Literally that’s “sing song.”

Kirin: 唱歌.

Adam: Another option would be to go see a movie, which is

Kirin: 看电影.

Adam: That’s literally “see movie.”

Kirin: 看电影

Adam: Or you might want to go to a local bar or pub which would be

Kirin: 九八

Adam: Once you meet in person. You might want to pay the person a compliment. Here’s the word for pretty or beautiful.

Kirin: 九八

Adam: So to say you are pretty, you’d say

Kirin: 妳很漂亮

Adam: Now this would be used for a woman. For a guy, you would use handsome, which is:

Kirin: 帅

Adam: So to say “you are handsome,” you’d say

Kirin: 你很帅

Adam: If things go well on this date, you may be hoping to get physically closer to your partner. You could start with

Kirin: 牵手

Adam: Which is literally hold hands.

Kirin: 牵手

Adam: From there, you might move towards a

Kirin: 抱抱

Adam: Which is a hug

Kirin: 抱抱

Adam: And lastly you may go for a

Kirin: 亲亲

Adam: Which refers to a kiss

Kirin: 亲亲

Adam: If things go well for you and you develop a relationship, you may develop nicknames for your partner. A common one is

Kirin: 宝贝

Adam: This refers to darling or baby.

Kirin: 宝贝

Adam: Now we hope your relationship goes well. Sometimes you may get into an argument or fight with your partner. This would be

Kirin: 吵架

Adam: Hopefully it’s not serious as that may lead you to break up or

Kirin: 分手

Adam: This literally means separate hands.

Kirin: 分手

Adam: Which is the literal opposite of

Kirin: 牵手

Adam: Which we learned earlier is “hold hands”.

Hopefully you find this lesson useful. If there is any vocabulary we missed, that you think might be useful, please leave a comment or get in touch.

Listen to lesson:

Adam: The vocabulary in this lesson is meant for those teaching English in Taiwan or China. Now in most cases, you’ll be doing all your teaching in English of course, but it’s helpful to know some classroom vocabulary, even if you’re not using it, since these may be words you hear around you, being spoken by your students or other teachers.

Let’s begin with the words for teacher and student. Teacher is:

Kirin: 老師

Adam: This literally means “old master” but refers to all teachers, young or old.

Kirin: 老師

Adam: And student is

Kirin: 学生

Adam: The 学 here is the verb “to study.”

Kirin: 学生

Adam: Next, let’s learn how to say “start of class.”

Kirin: 上课

Adam: The first part is used in many contexts 上, but here refers to the “start” while 课 refers to “class.” So start of class.

Kirin: 上课

Adam: Note that this is used differently than in English. So you could say things like “Where are you going? I’m going to start class.” Also note that this could be used by the teacher to refer to the class you’re teaching or by the student to refer to the class they are taking.

Kirin: 上课

Adam: Now the opposite of 上课 is

Kirin: 下课

Adam: This refers to the end of class.

Kirin: 下课

Adam: The characters 上 and 下
are used in a variety of contexts. Here they refer to starting and ending. They can also refer to up and down in other cases, so keep that in mind if you hear them used elsewhere.

Kirin: 下课

Adam: Next, you may want your students to quiet down or be quiet, which is

Kirin: 安静

Adam: That refers to peace and quiet. If you want to order your students to be quiet, you may say

Kirin: 安静一点

Adam: Which literally means “quiet” 安静 “a little” 一点.

In other words, “please quiet down a little.”

Kirin: 安静一点

Adam: From time to time, as a teacher you may have a question that you want students to answer. First the word for question, which is

Kirin: 问题

Adam: Now you may have heard this before as it’s also the word for “problem.” So a common expression you may have heard is

Kirin: 没问题

Adam: Meaning “No problem.”

Kirin: 没问题

Adam: By itself though 问题 can mean a question or a problem.

The verb to answer is

Kirin: 回答

Adam: This can also be used to mean reply

Kirin: 回答

Adam: So you can put these together to get “answer the question.”

Kirin: 回答问题

Adam: The actual answer that the student gives is

Kirin: 答案

Adam: Now normally when you ask a question in a classroom setting, students may need to raise their hands to answer. This would be

Kirin: 举手

Adam: Raise hand

Kirin: 举手

Adam: You may want to encourage them not to get distracted but instead to concentrate which is

Kirin: 专心

Adam: To concentrate

Kirin: 专心

Adam: At the end of the class, you may give them some homework which would be

Kirin: 功课

Adam: Homework

Kirin: 功课

Adam: The homework could be used by the students to practice what they’ve learned which is

Kirin: 练习

Adam: Practice

Kirin: 练习

Adam: To review what they’ve learned, they would need to

Kirin: 复习

Adam: Review

Kirin: 复习

Adam: And every now and then you may give them a test of their knowledge which would be

Kirin: 考试

Adam: Test

Kirin: 考试

Adam: If they pass the test, they

Kirin: 及格

Adam: To pass

Kirin: 及格

Adam: And if they don’t pass the test they fail, which is.

Kirin: 不及格

Adam: To fail

Kirin: 不及格

Adam: Let’s do a quick review of all the vocabulary learned in this lesson.

Teacher

Kirin: 老師

Adam: Student

Kirin: 学生

Adam: Start of class

Kirin: 上课

Adam: End of class

Kirin: 下课

Adam: Please quiet down a little

Kirin: 安静一点

Adam: Answer the question

Kirin: 回答问题

Adam: The actual answer that the student gives is

Kirin: 答案

Adam: Raise hand

Kirin: 举手

Adam: To concentrate

Kirin: 专心

Adam: Homework

Kirin: 功课

Adam: Practice

Kirin: 练习

Adam: Review

Kirin: 复习

Adam: Test

Kirin: 考试

Adam: To pass

Kirin: 及格

Adam: To fail

Kirin: 不及格

Listen to lesson:

Adam: This lesson is about restaurants and some common dishes.

Let’s begin with the word for “restaurant” which is:

Kirin: 餐厅

Adam: That literally means “meal hall”.

Kirin: 餐厅

Adam: Now let’s look at the word for “menu”.

Kirin: 菜单

Adam: This literally means “dish list” or “a list of dishes”.

Kirin: 菜单

Adam: Let’s now learn some categories of foods that you might see in a restaurant menu.

Kirin: 牛肉

Adam: Beef

Adam: 牛肉 comes from the word for “cow” while the 肉 means “meat.” So this literally means “cow meat.”

Kirin: 牛肉

Adam: Similarly to say “pork,” you’d say

Kirin: 猪肉

Adam: Which literally means “pig meat.”

Kirin: 猪肉

Adam: We then have “chicken” which is

Kirin: 鸡肉

Adam: Chicken meat.

Kirin: 鸡肉

Adam: Next we have “seafood”

Kirin: 海鮮

Adam: This literally means “sea fresh” or “fresh from the sea”

Kirin: 海鮮

Adam: We then have “vegetables”

Kirin: 蔬菜

Adam: Now this refers to just vegetables in general – like what you’d find in a salad.

Kirin: 蔬菜

Adam: If you were looking specifically for a vegetarian dish, you’d need to look for:

Kirin: 素食

Adam: So to ask if there were vegetarian dishes, you’d first need to know the word for “have” which is

Kirin: 有

Adam: So to ask if a restaurant had vegetarian dishes you could ask

Kirin: 有素食吗

Adam: The last character is a question particle 吗 that turns sentences into questions. So here you’re asking if they have vegetarian dishes.

Kirin: 有素食吗

Adam: Notice also the phrasing is simpler than in English. We can omit the pronoun “you” and just ask “have vegetarian dishes”?

Kirin: 有素食吗

Adam: Now unlike in English where we answer questions with yes or no, in Chinese if you ask a question in this form, to reply with yes they do have, they’d reply with:

Kirin: 有

Adam: Meaning they have. And if they didn’t have any, they’d reply with

Kirin: 没有

Adam: This means “don’t have”

Kirin: 没有

Adam: Now you can use this format to ask if a shop or place has anything. So if you wanted to know if they had chicken you could ask

Kirin: 有鸡肉吗?

Adam: Now when visiting Chinese communities, there may be new dishes that you haven’t tried before. When trying a new dish you may be asked if you like the food or not. To reply that something is delicious, you’d say:

Kirin: 好吃

Adam: This literally means “good eat.”

Kirin: 好吃

Adam: It’s made up of the characters 好 meaning “good”, which we’ve seen before in 你好 and 吃 which is the verb “to eat.” So together we get the word for “delicious.”

Kirin: 好吃

Adam: Now we’ve covered some types of foods, here are a few drinks you might encounter. First, the verb “to drink.”

Kirin: 喝

Adam: So this is “to drink” as opposed to 吃 which is “to eat.” So someone might ask

Kirin: 你要喝什么?

Adam: This literally means “you want drink” followed by the word for “what.”

Kirin: 什么

Adam: So she’s asking “What do you want to drink?”

Kirin: 你要喝什么?

Adam: So here are some choices.

Kirin: 茶

Adam: Tea. To confirm that you want “one cup of tea,” you’d say

Kirin: 一杯茶

Adam: Here we have the character for “cup.”

Kirin: 杯

Adam: So the reply here could be

Kirin: 我要一杯茶

Adam: I want one cup of tea.

Kirin: 我要一杯茶

Adam: To say “coffee,” you’d say:

Kirin: 咖啡

Adam: This sounds somewhat like the English word for coffee.

Kirin: 咖啡

Adam: Here’s another drink.

Kirin: 可乐

Adam: This sounds similar to the English word “Cola” and is used to mean “Coke” or “Pepsi”.

Kirin: 可乐

Adam: And finally you might be happy with just

Kirin: 水

Adam: which is “water.”

Kirin: 水

Adam: If you’re at a restaurant and you want to take your food “to go,” you could ask to

Kirin: 外带

Adam: To make that into a question you can point at your food and say

Kirin: 可以外带吗?

Adam: This literally means “Can takeaway” followed by the question particle.

Kirin: 可以外带吗?

Adam: If someone gives you a choice of foods, or a choice of anything really, and you’re open to any of the options, you can say.

Kirin: 都可以

Adam: This literally means “all possible” and is used to say that either choice is fine by me.

Kirin: 都可以

Adam: Let’s finish off with a couple of questions you may be asked when going to a fast food restaurant. The server might first ask you:

Kirin: 內用还是外带

Adam: They are basically asking you here if you will be eating the food at the restaurant or taking it to go.

Adam: The first word there was

Kirin: 內用

Adam: Which basically means “to eat inside”.

Kirin: 內用

Adam: The next word is

Kirin: 还是

Adam: Which is the word for “or”.

Kirin: 还是

Adam: And the last word, which we saw earlier is

Kirin: 外带

Adam: Which means “to go”

Kirin: 內用还是外带

Adam: When ordering food you may choose between to order single dishes or a set meal. A single dish would be:

Kirin: 单点

Adam: That basically means “single order”

Kirin: 单点

Adam: While a “set meal” would be:

Kirin: 套餐

Adam: That literally means “set meal”.

Adam: At any time during the meal, if you need to, you can ask for the restroom which is

Kirin: 厕所

Adam: restroom

Listen to lesson:

In this lesson, we’ll learn about shopping. It’s always nice when you get to speak some Chinese when shopping. Especially if you want to be able to bargain with someone. This could be used when traveling in China itself or hey, even in your local Chinatown.

We’ll begin today’s lesson with asking how much something is. Now normally if you’re out shopping and looking at something you have to first point out what it is you’re interested in, so let’s first learn how to say “this one.” How do we say that, Kirin?

Kirin: 这个.

Adam: So that’s a fourth tone and a neutral tone.

Kirin: 这个.

Adam: So that means “this one.” Now what if we wanted to say “that one”?

Kirin: 那个.

Adam: So again a fourth tone and a neutral tone.

Kirin: 那个.

Adam: So before you ask how much something is you first identify it using 这个 or 那个. How do you then ask “How much is it?”

Kirin: 多少钱?

Adam: So that’s a first tone 多, a third tone 少 and a second tone 钱.

Kirin: 多少钱?

Adam: Great, so let’s break down the meanings there. 多 means “many” while 少 means “a few.” In Chinese you’ll see many times that when two opposites are put together, it forms a question. We’ll explore this more later. The last character 钱 means “money.” So by asking “many few money,” you are basically asking “how much money” or “how much” something is.

Kirin: 多少钱?

Adam: So if I ask how much something is and it’s fifty dollars, how would they say that?

Kirin: 这个五十块钱.

Adam: So that’s saying “This one is fifty dollars money.”

Kirin: 这个五十块钱.

Adam: The only new word there is 块 which is a fourth tone and is a generic unit of currency. That’s followed by 钱 which is just specifying that it’s money we are talking about. Since that may be obvious you may just hear:

Kirin: 这个五十块.

Adam: Now in some places instead of 块 you may hear another word.

Kirin: 元.

Adam: That’s a second tone and specifically refers to dollars.

Kirin: 元.

Adam: Imagine you’re out shopping for souvenirs and you ask the clerk what the price is. So first, how do you ask “How much is this one?”

Kirin: 这个多少钱?

Adam: Alright, so here are some prices. Let’s see if you can figure out how much they are.

Kirin: 两百五十块.

Adam: So that is…250 dollars. Let’s try another one.

Kirin: 七千三百二十块.

Adam: 7320 dollars. Here’s one more…

Kirin: 九十一块.

Adam: So that’s…91 dollars. Great, so continuing with this scenario, the clerk has just told you the price and you think it’s too expensive. How would you let them know that?

Kirin: 太贵了!

Adam: So there are three characters there – the first two are fourth tones and the last word is a neutral tone.

Kirin: 太贵了!

Adam: We’ve actually seen all three words before. We saw 太 in 太太. Do you remember what “太” means? It means… “too much of something.” We also saw 贵 in “您贵姓?” 贵 means “honorable” or in this case “expensive.” The last character 了 is just a particle used in expressions of this nature. So again – “Too expensive!”

Kirin: 太贵了!

Adam: Now how about if you wanted a cheaper price, how would you ask for that?

Kirin: 可以便宜一点吗?

Adam: Wow, so a few new words in there. Let’s break it down for you. We know it’s a question because of the 吗 at the end. The first part is 可以 which is two third tones and that means “to be allowed to do something.” Since this is a question you are asking if something is permissible. This is followed by 便宜 which is two second tones and that means “cheap.” We then have 一点 which we’ve seen before. Do you remember what “一点” means? It means… “a little.” So putting that all together gives us “Can cheaper a little?” or “Can you make this a little cheaper?”

Kirin: 可以便宜一点吗?

Adam: Let’s continue this dialogue. You’ve found what you want, you like the price so you want to let the clerk know that you want to purchase it. For this, we need to know the verb “want” which is…

Kirin: 要.

Adam: That’s a fourth tone.

Kirin: 要.

Adam: So knowing that, we have all the vocabulary necessary to say “I want this one.” Can you figure out how to say that?

Kirin: 我要这个.

Adam: I hope you got that right.

Kirin: 我要这个.

Adam: Now what if you wanted to say “I want two of them.” How would you say that?

Kirin: 我要两个.

Adam: So we use 两 meaning “two” followed by 个 which is the generic measure word so 两个 means “two of something.” Similarly how would you say “five of something?”

Kirin: 五个.

Adam: And so on. You are now ready to pay for your purchase. For that, you’ll need to give the cashier some money, so first let’s look at the verb “to give.”

Kirin: 给.

Adam: That’s a third tone.

Kirin: 给.

Adam: So if the item is a hundred dollars, you need to say “Give you 100 dollars.”

Kirin: 给你一百块.

Adam: Note that in many cases you can leave out pronouns when they are obvious, so in this case you wouldn’t need to say “I’m giving you money” since the “I” is implied.

Kirin: 给你一百块.

Adam: Now if instead of cash, you prefer to use a credit card, you can use the word:

Kirin: 刷卡

Adam: This literally means “swipe card.”

刷卡

Adam: So to ask if you can use a credit card, you can use the same format as the question above to ask 可以刷卡吗? which literally means can swipe card?

Listen to lesson:

Depending on how long you plan to stay in China or Taiwan, you may decide to skip this section, as numbers are usually displayed in English, when you’re out and about – so you could always point at prices or type out numbers into a calculator and be perfectly understood. However if you’d like to learn how numbers work in Chinese, then continue on.

Now we’ll start with the numbers zero through ten. This is also a good way to practice your tones. Listen and try to figure out what tone it is and then try and repeat out loud or in your head. So let’s start with zero.

Kirin: 零.

Adam: That’s a second tone.

Kirin: 零.

Adam: One.

Kirin: 一.

Adam: That’s a first tone.

Kirin: 一.

Adam: Two.

Kirin: 二.

Adam: That’s a fourth tone.

Kirin: 二.

Adam: Three.

Kirin: 三.

Adam: That’s a first tone.

Kirin: 三.

Adam: Four.

Kirin: 四.

Adam: That’s a fourth tone.

Kirin: 四.

Adam: Five.

Kirin: 五.

Adam: That’s a third tone.

Kirin: 五.

Adam: Six.

Kirin: 六.

Adam: That’s a fourth tone.

Kirin: 六.

Adam: Seven.

Kirin: 七.

Adam: That’s a first tone.

Kirin: 七.

Adam: Eight.

Kirin: 八.

Adam: That’s also a first tone.

Kirin: 八.

Adam: Nine.

Kirin: 九.

Adam: That’s a third tone.

Kirin: 九.

Adam: Ten.

Kirin: 十.

Adam: That’s a second tone.

Kirin: 十.

Adam: So Kirin why don’t you repeat the numbers again from zero to ten.

Kirin: 零, 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十.

Adam: Now once you know the numbers from zero to ten, that gives you easy access to the rest of the numbers all the way up to ninety-nine.

Eleven is just “ten – one” or…

Kirin: 十一.

Adam: Twelve becomes “ten – two.”

Kirin: 十二.

Adam: And so on up to twenty which is “two – ten” or…

Kirin: 二十.

Adam: Twenty one would then be “two – ten – one” and so on. Thirty would be “three – ten” all the way to ninety nine which would be “nine – ten – nine.” So with that in mind, let’s see how good you are with numbers. Kirin, why don’t you give us some numbers in Chinese, and we’ll try to figure out what they are in English.

Kirin: 好. 三十二.

Adam: Did you figure that out? It was… thirty two.

Kirin: 七十六.

Adam: Seventy six.

Kirin: 十三.

Adam: Thirteen.

Kirin: 五十.

Adam: Fifty.

Kirin: 四十四.

Adam: Forty four.

Alright, I think we get the hang of that. Now as I said before, practicing numbers is a good way to practice tones, especially with the last example. It is very easy to confuse four (四) with ten (十) so practicing numbers should help you distinguish between the different tones.

Let’s continue on with the word for one hundred.

Kirin: 一百.

Adam: So that’s a first tone 一 which means “one” and a third tone 百 which means “hundred.” So that gives us “one hundred.”

Kirin: 一百.

Adam: Now for “one hundred and one” up to “one hundred and nine,” we literally say “one hundred zero one” up to “one hundred zero nine.” So let’s try a few of the numbers in there. How would you say “one hundred and one”?

Kirin: 一百〇一.

Adam: One hundred and five.

Kirin: 一百〇五.

Adam: One hundred and nine.

Kirin: 一百〇九.

Adam: Now for one hundred and ten, we say “one hundred one ten.”

Kirin: 一百一十.

Adam: Similarly for one hundred and twenty, we say one hundred two ten.

Kirin: 一百二十.

Adam: Let’s try one hundred and seventy.

Kirin: 一百七十.

Adam: And so on. For the numbers in between we just say 一百 followed by the number in between so let’s try… “one hundred and thirty six.”

Kirin: 一百三十六.

Adam: Let’s try a few more numbers to practice. One hundred and seventy nine.

Kirin: 一百七十九.

Adam: One hundred and fifty four.

Kirin: 一百五十四.

Adam: One hundred and seventy seven.

Kirin: 一百七十七.

Adam: Great, I hope you’re getting the hang of this. We’re now up to two hundred, which is a little different than you might expect. The number two in Chinese has two forms. There’s 二 which we’re familiar with so far and there’s also another form which we need to use now.

Kirin: 两.

Adam: So that’s a third tone.

Kirin: 两.

Adam: 两 is usually used when you need to say “two of something.” It’s the only number that has this alternate form and sometimes you just need to see it used in different situations several times to get the hang of it. Hopefully we can help you with that in our future lessons. So the first occurrence of it when counting upwards is for two hundred. It also gets used for two thousand, twenty thousand and two million. So while you still may hear 二百 in some parts, we’re going to use 两百. So let’s try a few more examples to practice what we’ve just learned. How do you say “two hundred and twenty five?”

Kirin: 两百二十五.

Adam: Two hundred and eighty two.

Kirin: 两百八十二.

Adam: Let’s continue with examples of the rest of the numbers up to a thousand since they all share the same form. Three hundred and forty seven.

Kirin: 三百四十七.

Adam: Six hundred and seventy eight.

Kirin: 六百七十八.

Adam: Eight hundred and fifteen.

Kirin: 八百一十五.

Adam: Great, that now brings us to one thousand which is…

Kirin: 一千.

Adam: So that’s 一 meaning one followed by a first tone 千.

Kirin: 一千.

Adam: The numbers from “one thousand” up to “ten thousand” use a similar format to what we’ve seen so far. To say “one thousand and one,” we’d literally say “one thousand zero one” which is:

Kirin: 一千〇一.

Adam: Let’s practice a few more. One thousand two hundred and fifty three.

Kirin: 一千两百五十三.

Adam: Seven thousand nine hundred and sixteen.

Kirin: 七千九百一十六.

Adam: Nine thousand and twelve.

Kirin: 九千〇一十二.

Adam: So hopefully you’re getting the hang of this and are able to follow along. In the next lesson, you’ll be able to take your knowledge of numbers to help you with some shopping, so join us then.

Listen to lesson:

So now that you’ve learned some basic greetings, here are a few words and expressions you’re likely to come across or may need to know to get by. Pick and choose which ones you want to learn.

When interacting with locals in China or Taiwan, they may be curious to know where you’re from. So you may hear them ask:

你是哪里人

The literal breakdown of this sentence is “You are where person.” This is how they ask “Where are you from?”

你是哪里人

Now it would be in your interest to learn how to say the name of your own country. If you were American for example, you would reply:

我是美国人

Let’s break that down. The 我是 literally means “I am.”

美国 is how you say America. And then the 人 is tacked on at the end to mean “person.” So together

我是美国人

means “I am American.”

我是美国人

Use the Wordbank feature on our site to search for the name of your country so that you can answer this question correctly. If you can’t find it, just leave a comment and we’d be glad to help you out.

Now if you’re out and about and someone starts speaking to you in Chinese, you may want to let them know that you don’t speak Chinese – at least not just yet. You do this by saying:

我不会说中文

Let’s break this down for you. There’s 我, which means “I” followed by 不 – this is a negation particle and is what is used to say “don’t.” That’s followed by 会 meaning “able to,” and then 说 meaning “speak” and finally the word for “Chinese” 中文.

So together we get “I’m not able to speak Chinese.”

我不会说中文.

You might also want to say “I can speak a little.”

我会说一点

That uses the word for “a little bit”.

一点

Conversely, if you wanted to say “I can speak English,” you would say:

我会说英文

This is literally “I am able to speak” followed by the word for “English”: 英文

我会说英文

Let’s now learn some common words you might hear or want to use.

喜欢

This is the word “to like.”

喜欢

To say “I like” you would say:

我喜欢

To say “you don’t like” something, you use the same negation particle we learned earlier:

不

So “don’t like” would be

不喜欢

To ask a question, we add a 吗 particle at the end. To ask “Do you like?”, you’d ask

你喜欢中国吗?

That’s literally “You like” followed by the question particle:

你喜欢中国吗?

Unlike English where we reply with yes or no, in Chinese if a question is asked with a verb like this, to reply in the affirmative you just reply with the verb. So if you ask me 你喜欢中国吗, I could reply with 喜欢 meaning “I like.” Or I could reply with 不喜欢 if I don’t like.

If someone says something to you, you could also reply with 对, meaning “correct.”

Kirin: 对

Adam: Another form of question you may hear is to be given two options and have you choose one. So for example if someone just wanted to ask “right?” They could say

对吗

or they could say 对不对?

So here you’re being asked to select between 对 “correct” or 不对 “not correct.”

Now Chinese is a very polite culture, so it may be helpful to learn some phrases to ask for help.

请问

This is used to say “May I ask”. It could be used to get someone’s attention to see if you can ask them a question. It literally means “please ask.”

请问

Another word you should learn is:

对不起

This could mean “sorry” or “excuse me.” If you accidentally bump into someone or if you just want to get someone’s attention you could say

对不起

Here’s another one:

不好意思

This is a more polite form of 对不起. The actual meaning is something along the lines of “it troubles me” or “I feel embarrassed”. It’s used in situations where you feel you’re bothering someone or interrupting them in some way.

不好意思

The last one you might want to learn is:

麻烦你

麻烦 on its own refers to something that is troublesome or bothersome. So 麻烦你 is used in situations where you’re asking a favor that requires them to go out of their way for you (even if the actual effort is minimal).

麻烦你

So what happens if someone else uses these phrases on you. How do you respond if they feel they are troubling or bothering you, when in most cases they are just being polite?

You could say:

没关系

That translates to “That’s ok” or “No trouble at all”.

没关系

Or you could say:

没问题

This literally means “no problem.”

没问题

Or the last one here which is:

不客气

This literally means “No need to be so formal or polite.”

不客气

It’s also the equivalent to saying “You’re welcome” when someone says thank you. So when someone says

谢谢你

You can reply with

不客气

Listen to lesson:

Adam: In our last lesson we introduced the four tones to you in Chinese. If you are not familiar with them, we encourage you to listen to that lesson again to get a handle on them. Now just as a review though Kirin, why don’t you give them to us again, using a different example. Now there were four tones. The first tone was a high tone…

Kirin: 搭, 搭.

Adam: The second tone was the rising tone.

Kirin: 答, 答.

Adam: The third tone was the falling rising tone.

Kirin: 打, 打.

Adam: And lastly we had the fourth tone which was a falling tone.

Kirin: 大, 大.

Adam: Now this is the last time that I’ll refer to the tones as high, rising, falling – rising, and falling. From here on I’ll refer to the tones as tone 1, 2, 3 and 4. So you’ll have to remember which is which. There are only four tones, so hopefully I am not asking too much of you here. Now that we’ve mastered these tones, let’s move on to some useful vocabulary.

Now I’m sure the first thing that anybody wants to know when learning a new language is how to say “hello.” So how do you say “hello” in Chinese, Kirin?

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: Now another point to note is that while in English words are made up of letters, in Chinese we deal with characters. A character is essentially a syllable which has its own tone. A word can be made up of one or more characters. So again to say “hello” in Chinese, there are two characters, here each of which has its own tone. So listen and try to distinguish what tones they are. So again, Kirin – “hello.”

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: Alright, so the first character was a third tone and the second character was also a third tone.

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: Now let’s look at the literal meaning. The 你 means “you.” And the 好 means “good.” So when you say 你好 in Chinese, you’re actually wishing someone “you good.” Isn’t that interesting? So there are two important characters we’ve learned today – the character for “you” – 你 and the character for “good” 好 and if you put them together you get 你好 which means “Hello!”

You’ll find that a lot in Chinese. When common characters are put together they can represent very different meanings. Now when someone says 你好 to you, what is the standard response?

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: So basically you just repeat it back to them as you would if they were saying “hello”. So let’s try that.

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: 你好. Just like that. Excellent. Now we learned the word for “you”, which is:

Kirin: 你.

Adam: Let’s now learn the word for “I” or “me”:

Kirin: 我.

Adam: Again…

Kirin: 我.

Adam: And how about the word for “he” or “she”?

Kirin: 他.

Adam: Again…

Kirin: 他.

Adam: Now our listeners should recognize that as a first tone. The word for “he” and “she” is the same in Chinese so you have to distinguish between male and female from the context. If I was pointing at a man when I said 他, you’d know I mean “he” while if I was pointing at a woman you’d know that I meant “she.” Now getting back to characters, there are actually two different characters for he and she. A male and female equivalent. So in written form, you would know the difference, whereas in spoken form, you would have to derive it from context.

Now let’s look at some other greetings you might hear. Good morning:

Kirin: 早安.

Adam: This is made up of two characters. The first comes from the word for morning, while the second comes from the word for peace. So this way you’re wishing someone a peaceful morning.

Kirin: 早安.

Adam: This might be simplified to just

Kirin: 早

Adam: Similarly to how in English we might just say “morning” instead of “Good morning.”

Kirin: 早

Adam: Similarly, to say “Good afternoon”, you’d say:

Kirin: 午安

Adam: Now this one doesn’t have a short form, so you have to say both characters.

Kirin: 午安

Adam: And similarly to say “Good night” you’d say

Kirin: 晚安

Adam: Now note that this is to say good night, when you’re leaving and not when you’re saying hello.

Kirin: 晚安

Adam: Now let’s move along to the word for “thanks.” How do you say “thanks”?

Kirin: 谢谢.

Adam: So this word is made up of two characters, and it’s actually the same character said twice, both fourth tones meaning “thanks.”

Kirin: 谢谢.

Adam: Additionally you can also say a more polite

Kirin: 谢谢你.

Adam: meaning “thank you” rather than just

Kirin: 谢谢

Adam: meaning “thanks.” Hope you got all that. Let’s end our lesson today by teaching how to say “goodbye.” How do you say “goodbye”?

Kirin: 再见.

Adam: Again?

Kirin: 再见.

Adam: Alright so I’ll ask our listeners if they can figure out the tones on those two characters. They are both…fourth tones. The literal meaning of the two characters is 再 meaning “again” and 见 meaning “meet,” so “again meet,” kind of like “See you again.”

Kirin: 再见.

Adam: Let’s wrap up with a review of all the vocabulary we’ve learned today. So we’ll start with “hello.”

Kirin: 你好.

Adam: You

Kirin: 你

Adam: Me or I

Kirin: 我

Adam: He or She

Kirin: 他

Adam: Good morning

Kirin: 早安

Adam: Good afternoon

Kirin: 午安

Adam: Good night

Kirin: 晚安

Adam: Thanks.

Kirin: 谢谢.

Adam: Goodbye.

Kirin: 再见.

Adam: Great, so that wraps up this lesson. I hope you learned something there. Please join us again for our next lesson.

Listen to lesson:

First I’d like to say welcome to the Chinese Basics course. This course is designed for anyone who is traveling to China or Taiwan who wants to learn a few important words and phrases in Mandarin Chinese to help make your travels or stay that much more enjoyable.

Now while locals may be able to speak bits of English in the touristy areas, you’ll notice huge appreciation if you can reply even just a few words in their language. After all, you’re visiting their country so it makes sense that you learn their language rather than expect them to speak English with you.

So how do you use this course? This course is split into 3 sections. The first section, which includes the lesson you’re listening to now, provides an introduction to Mandarin Chinese – teaches you about tones and how they are used in the language along with some basic words and phrases that you probably want to know. How to say hello, thank you, goodbye – that sort of thing.

The second section provides more knowledge for those who will be spending a bit of time in a Chinese community. It will teach you how to count, how to shop and how to eat at restaurants. And the last section is for those who plan to live or stay in Taiwan or China for an extended period. It includes the type of vocabulary you might need to know if you’re planning to work in an office type environment, teaching English or trying to have a social life.

Now each lesson includes transcripts which I highly recommend you follow along with. The Chinese vocabulary that is taught is transcribed using a format called Pinyin. Pinyin is a standardized way of taking the Chinese sounds and writing them out in English for you. Now there are some sounds in Chinese that aren’t there in English. And there will be some words that when you read them out in Pinyin don’t sound as you expect. That’s fine – just listen to the words and read the associated pinyin and eventually your brain will recognize the patterns and make the associations. Your goal should be to get to a level where you can read a new word in pinyin and be able to pronounce it correctly even before you hear it. That will come later though – for now, listen and read along at the same time. Above each word in pinyin will be the associated tone mark that tells you what tone to use when pronouncing the word. You’ll learn more about tones, later in this lesson.

Now the hardest part about learning Chinese is characters. In English, words are made up of letters. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and if you know these, you can spell out any word you want. In Chinese though, words are made up of characters. Each character is basically a syllable in speech. So a word may be made up of one or more syllables, each of which has its own character. Unfortunately there are thousands of characters – some obviously more common than others. If all you’re looking for is an introduction to Chinese, my advice would be to skip characters for now and just focus on pinyin. However, as part of this introductory course, we do give you the option to view the transcript in Chinese character form if you want to see what these characters look like. There are two types of Chinese characters – simplified, which is used throughout China and Singapore and traditional, which is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. You can switch between these two formats with just a click of a button, or of course just stick to pinyin.

We’ll begin with some basics about the Chinese language. The biggest difference between Chinese and English is that Chinese is a tonal language – there are four tones that are used to distinguish words from each other. Really, that’s the key to learning the language for if you can master those four tones – you’ve mastered the hardest part of learning Chinese. In English even if you change tones, the general meaning of a word is still the same. For example with the word “pig” – you could say “pīg, píg, pǐg and pìg” and they’d all be referring to the same thing. In Chinese though if you were to use the word for pig and used those same four different tones you’d actually be saying four completely different words with completely unrelated meanings as you’ll hear in a moment. Now because it’s so important to get these tones right I highly encourage our listeners to try and repeat the Chinese words as you hear them – we leave a pause for you to do just that. If it’s not possible for you to repeat the words out aloud try to do so in your mind. It will make a big difference in the long run.

I’ll now proceed to describe the four tones with Kirin helping me sound them out. Now, how do you say “pig” in Chinese, Kirin?

Kirin: 猪.

Adam: Now that’s the first tone, which is a high tone. Please repeat that for us again, Kirin.

Kirin: 猪.

Adam: Alright. Now that just happens to be the word for “pig” in Chinese. The second tone is a rising tone. Kirin will now demonstrate the second tone with our example.

Kirin: 竹.

Adam: Ok, one more time…

Kirin: 竹.

Adam: Now that means “bamboo.” So you can see the difference between 猪 and 竹. Imagine if you were in a restaurant and were trying to order meat from a pig but you instead asked for meat from a bamboo – that might be a little embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Now, the third tone is what we call a falling rising tone. How does that sound, Kirin?

Kirin: 煮.

Adam: Alright, again?

Kirin: 煮.

Adam: Ok, and that means “to cook.” So wow, completely different meaning again. Now, it’s sometimes hard to differentiate between the second tone and the third tone. Now the difference is that third tone usually lasts a bit longer. So listen to the two tones again and see if you can hear the difference. So first you have the second tone…

Kirin: 竹

Adam: …and the third tone…

Kirin: 煮.

Adam: So I hope you can hear the difference there. The latter is definitely just a little bit longer. Now the last tone is what we call a falling tone. How does that go, Kirin?

Kirin: 住.

Adam: Alright. Can we hear it again?

Kirin: 住.

Adam: Great, and that is the verb “to live.” Isn’t that interesting? So let’s repeat the four tones again, a couple of times each so we can distinguish between them. Again, please try and say these words out aloud or in your head just so you can get the feel for the different tones. So the first tone was a high tone.

Kirin: 猪, 猪.

Adam: The second one was the rising tone.

Kirin: 竹, 竹.

Adam: The third one was the falling, rising tone.

Kirin: 煮, 煮.

Adam: And the last one was the falling tone…

Kirin: 住, 住.

Adam: Excellent! So as you can see from the great difference in meaning between those how important it is to master those tones. So as long as you try to repeat the words exactly as you hear them, it shouldn’t cause too much trouble in the long term.

Now before we go Kirin, why don’t you pick a few Chinese words and pronounce them for us. We will then try and identify which tone one to four they are.

Kirin: Ok… 起, 起.

Adam: Ok, so do you know what tone that was? That was the third tone, falling rising. Let’s try another one.

Kirin: 听, 听.

Adam: So what tone does that sound like? It was…the first tone, high. Let’s try another one.

Kirin: 看, 看.

Adam: So that was…the fourth tone, falling. And let’s do one more.

Kirin: 来, 来.

Adam: And that was the second tone, rising.

I hope that helps you see the difference between the tones. It’s important to understand this concept because all future vocabulary we teach in upcoming lessons will be using one of these tones. You’ll see which tone is used for which word above the pinyin in the associated transcript.
We’ll continue with this course in our next lesson, where we’ll teach you some basic greetings. We’ll see you then.