Week 3: Conversations

大家好！

So today we learned a few conversational phases that is useful for beginners who would like to start conversing in mandarin.

We learned;
1. Greetings
2. Introducing

in greetings, we learned how to greet someone formally and casually.

您 (nin) and  你 (ni) have the same meaning which is "you".

你 (ni) is only used when greeting casually like your friends or people younger than you.
e.g. 你 好 吗？(ni hao ma?)= How are you?

您 (nin) is used when greeting a stranger or someone older than you (show respect).
e.g. 您 好 (nin hao)= Hello
*note: you do not say "你 好 吗?" towards a stranger. it is weird.

other than 你好 and 你好吗？, other greetings includes;

早上好＝ good morning
下午好= good afternoon
晚上好＝ good evening


in "introducing yourself" we learnt how to introduce your surname, name and nationality.

=Name=
formally, you do not straight away ask;
你 叫 什么 名字？(ni jiao shenme mingzi?)= what is your name?
That is very informal ^

instead, we should say,
您 贵姓？(nin guixing)= what is your surname?

to answer, we can say;
我 姓 (wo xing)  surname， 叫 (jiao) full name. = My surname is____, you can call me _____.

=Nationality=
to ask for nationality;
你哪国人？(ni na guo ren?)= Which nationality are you?
*note: 你是哪国人？(ni shi na guo ren) is wrong grammar. dont put in the "是"

to answer, we can just say;
我是_________ 人。(wo shi____ren)= I am _______.

So I guess I can greet and introduce myself now~

Below is a video I did for one of the assignments for mandarin class based on these topics.

Greeting and Introducing Yourself video by Sabrina

That is all :>

Sabrina 上