Lesson 1 – Greetings

	Pinyin	English	Notes
你	nǐ	you	Pronoun, second person singular.
好	hǎo	good	Adjective, generally indicating a positive quality.
你好	ní hǎo	hello	A greeting, not a question.
我	wǒ	I or me	Pronoun, first person singular. Note: wǒ can be used as a subject (“I”) or an object (“me”).
很	hěn	very	Adverb of degree
吗	ma		Particle, used to request confirmation. Similar to a rising tone in English.
呢	ne	what about ..?	Particle, used to request more information.
也	yě	also	Adverb, expressing similarity
忙	máng	busy	Adjective
不	bù	not	Adverb of negation
早上	zǎoshang	morning	Noun, early in the day
晚上	wǎnshang	evening	Noun, late in the day
再见	zàijiàn	good bye	Expression, taken separately the characters mean “again” “meet”.

Tone Change

When two 3rd tone syllables occur in sequence, the first syllable is usually pronounced with a 2nd tone. This makes the sentence easier to say. For example “nǐ hǎo” (the written form) is normally pronounced “ní hǎo” (the spoken form). Unfortunately, all books published with pinyin use the written form and let you figure out how to say it. In contrast, this courseware will display the spoken form at all times, so you don’t have to guess about the pronunciation.

Grammar Patterns

Grammar is the patterns of a language. Although every pattern has exceptions, recognizing the language patterns improves our feel for the language.

Sentences

All the sentences in this lesson describe conditions: good, bad, busy, not busy. It is interesting to note that they do not contain any form of the verb “is”. Mandarin does have a verb that is similar to “is”, which we will learn in the 3rd lesson. The table below illustrates the structure of sentences that express conditions.

subject	adjective phrase	meaning
Wǒ	hén hǎo.	I am very good
Nǐ	bù máng	You are not busy

 

Particles

Particles, like ma and ne in Chinese, are structural words. They are used to indicate the purpose of a sentence (such as question or statement) without effecting the content.

• When ma occurs at the end of a sentence it is asking for confirmation. For example “Nǐ máng” is the statement “You are busy”, while  “Nǐ máng ma?” asks for confirmation of that statement.
• When ne occurs at the end of a sentence it indicates a more open ended question. For example “nǐ ne?” means “what about you?” and “wǒ ne” means “what about me?”.

Seeking Confirmation

We learned two sentences that seek confirmation in this lesson: “Nǐ máng ma?” and “Ní hǎo ma?”. All confirmation questions have the same structure: a statement, followed by “ma”. This is much easier than English, where we change the order of subject and verb.

Statement	“?”	Answer
Wǒ máng	ma?	Máng
Ní hǎo	ma?	Hén hǎo
Nǐ máng	ma?	Máng

Confirming the question also differs from English. Chinese does not have a simple “yes” and “no”;. Instead, the Chinese speaker uses the verb or adverb of the sentence in its positive or negative form.

Here are some examples of answers to “Nǐ máng ma?”.

• Wó hěn máng. – affirmative response
• Bù máng. – affirmative response
• Wǒ máng. – omitting any adverbs
• Máng. – brief and succinct

After answering you can use “Nǐ ne?” to return the question. And, if the second answer is consistent with the first you can add yě to the response

• Wǒ yé hěn máng.
• Yé hěn máng.
• Wó yě máng.

Statement	“?”	Answer
Wó hěn máng,	nǐ ne?	Wǒ yé hěn máng
Bù máng,	nǐ ne?	Wó yě bù máng
Máng,	nǐ ne?	Wó yě máng

Greetings

Just as in English, a response to a greeting is usually the same as the greeting.

Greeting	Response
Zǎo	Zǎo
Ní hǎo.	Ní hǎo.
Zǎoshang hǎo.	Zǎoshang hǎo.
Wǎnshang hǎo.	Wǎnshang hǎo.
Zàijiàn.	Zàijiàn.