basic mandarin #2: greetings
so from this post on i’m going to be introducing vocab and grammar starting from the beginning
***note: the characters will be typed with simplified characters and then the pinyin and meaning
们 men plural suffix for pronouns and some nouns
中文 zhōngwén Chinese language
不 bù negative prefix, not
是 shì to be (note: 是 can only be used with nouns; a different word is required for adjectives), yes
吗 ma a question particle for yes-no questions
早上／上午 zǎoshàng/shàngwǔ morning
早上好／早安 zǎoshàng hǎo/zǎo’ān good morning
下午好 xiàwǔ hǎo good afternoon
晚上好／晚安 wǎnshàng hǎo/wǎn’ān good evening
不太好 bú tài hǎo not so good
***since 小姐 is also considered as slang for prostitute, i asked some native speakers for advice and one said if you use someone’s name with 小姐 it’s okay (e.g., 陈小姐 Chen xiaojie) but that you can also use 美女 měinǚ and 姑娘 gūniang as alternatives. all in all, just treat carefully with 小姐
When greeting others, you must address the person first then say the greeting.
Like English, Mandarin has a Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure.
When asking a question, you usually can replace a word with the necessary question word.
What is your name? (literally You are called what name)
My name is Yaling (literally I am called Yaling)
吗 is used to ask a yes-no question
I am a teacher OR I am not a teacher
If someone asks you a question, you can use 呢 ne at the end of a sentence to make it interrogative. In many cases it functions the same way as “how about…?” in English.
so this is it for the second basic mandarin post. i would appreciate any feedback that you have. thanks, and i hope this helps!!
