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Move your mouse pointer over (or touch, from your mobile device) any Chinese words or phrases to get a translation.

Adam: Hello, I’m Adam.

Kirin: . Kirin. .

Adam: This is level 2 of our series, which builds upon what was taught in level 1. Our last lesson focused on the five tones, which built off the first lesson of Level 1. Today we’ll build upon the second lesson of Level 1 which was Greetings. By now you should all be well familiar with , and . Today we’ll learn a few new greetings depending on the time of day.

Now we first learned the different times of day back in Lesson 19. So let’s do a quick review of them starting with “morning.”

Kirin: .

Adam: Afternoon.

Kirin: .

Adam: Night.

Kirin: .

Adam: Great, so if you wanted to say “Good morning” how would you do that?

Kirin: .

Adam: Easy enough. Literally, “morning good.”

Kirin: .

Adam: Now in Taiwan you’re likely to hear a different version.

Kirin: .

Adam: So there’s a new character there, .

Kirin: .

Adam: So here can mean “quiet or peaceful”; so it’s like wishing someone a peaceful morning.

Kirin: .

Adam: Similarly, to wish someone “Good afternoon,” you could say:

Kirin: .

Adam: Again, that’s used in Taiwan whereas in other parts of China you may hear:

Kirin: .

Adam: Just like in English, “Goodnight” is used when you’re leaving rather than as an initial greeting. So here, too, we’re back to:

Kirin: .

Adam: So that again is used in China while

Kirin:

Adam: is used in Taiwan. Try and figure out which of these the people around you are using and go with that form. Now getting back to Lesson 2, we learned that is the most common way to say “goodbye.” Let’s listen to a few other versions.

Kirin: .

Adam: The is the same from while the we’ve also seen before as in “to be able to do something” so we’re basically saying “We’ll see you again.”

Kirin: .

Adam: If you wanted to specifically say “See you next time” you could say:

Kirin: .

Adam: We’ve seen both these words before. The here is the same from , while the we’ve seen before in lesson 23 in , as in “first time.” Originally we had explained the meaning of as “after.” It can also be used to mean “next” so here means “next time.”

Kirin: .

Adam: For more formal occasions we can use a longer form:

Kirin: .

Adam: Which literally means “We’ll see you next time.”

Kirin: .

Adam: We’ll now switch our focus a little bit to our Premium podcasts since that’s what we’ll be using from hereon to test whether you understand this material. Our goal in Level 2 is to switch more of the in-lesson dialogue into Chinese which means we’ll need to teach you some of the phrases we’ll be using from hereon. So let’s start with the first one:

Kirin: .

Adam: So that may seem like much, but we’ve seen all these words before. Let’s see how much of it you remember.

Kirin: ?

Adam: That’s the verb “to use”

Kirin: ?

Adam: That means “translate”

Kirin: ?

Adam: This one needs to be broken down. We know that can mean next or after. You may also remember the from and , which we saw back in Lesson 56 meaning “side.” So in this context means “the next part.” Let’s see what else you remember.

Kirin: ?

Adam: We originally taught in lesson 36 to mean “subject” or “topic.” It can also be used to mean question or sentence in question. So putting this all together gives us:

Kirin: .

Adam: Which literally means “Please use Chinese translate the next part sentence.”

Kirin: .

Adam: Which basically means “Please translate the following into Chinese.”

Kirin: .

Adam: Similarly, you could also say:

Kirin: .

Adam: , you may remember, from in Lesson 19 meaning “no problem.” So can mean “problem” or “question.” So here the meaning of the sentence is: “Please translate the following question into Chinese.”

Kirin: .

Adam: Now that we know the word for “question,” let’s look at the word for “answer.”

Kirin: .

Adam: So there are two characters there.

Kirin: . .

Adam: So knowing what we’ve learned so far, how would you say: “Please use Chinese to answer the following question”?

Kirin: .

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