Chinese Language course

From nowhere to pinyin

The chinese tones

Possible combinations of initials and finals in standard Mandarin

shēngcí 1

shēngcí 2

kèwén 1

Chinese names

Greeting someone

Asking someone's name and nationality

Pronunciation of syllables and words

shengci 3

kèwén 2

The interrogative sentence

The time

liànxí 1

shēngcí 4

kèwén 3

The numbers

shēngcí 5

kèwén 4

liànxí 2

shēngcí 6

kèwén 5

shēngcí 7

kèwén 6

Asking someone’s name:

1. The most common way of asking someone’s name is:

The answer would typically be:

2. If you want to ask the name of an elderly person, a more polite way to do so is by using:

 As you are only asking for the person’s surname in this phrase, you will only get a surname as a reply:

If you want to know the person’s full name, after this, you will still have to ask as described before, but by asking this seemingly redundant question first, you at least showed the intention of being polite. Because many people are so cunning that they can actually predict your next question, they decide to make life easier and reply as follows:

Now to make use of your skills, if you are not familiar with your classmates’ names, go ahead and ask around (in Chinese, of course). If you are, first pretend you aren’t, then go ahead and ask around. Also ask your teacher’s name, and remember to show some respect towards him.

The funky translations were just for you to get a basic idea of how sentences are built in Chinese, and we will drop them in the future. You might be prepared for a hard time learning all the characters, but from the translations you could see that the basics of Chinese grammar are but a walk in the park.

Asking someone’s nationality:

You’ll see that everyone will be very interested in your nationality. They will ask you where you are from before they even ask your name. Most probably, this is the question you will hear:

Another version is:

The answer to either of these can be

Note: According to surveys, “的” is the most frequently used word in the Chinese language. We will discuss its gramatical functions later.