Hello, 您好, Nín Hâo!

By Sun

Interested in learning some Chinese? Here’s a chance.

The Times is having a ChinaWeek, featuring some good articles and videos about China, as well as short lessons to learn Mandarin Chinese. For example, the first lesson is about Greeting People:

In Chiese (to view Chinese, set your browser character encoding to Chinese Simplified (GB2312)

Wang Nín hâo! (您好!)
Brown Nî hâo! (您好!)
Wang Nín shì Bùlâng xiânsheng ma? (您是布朗先生�？)
Brown Shì. (是)
Wang Wô jiào Wáng Lìlì. (我�王丽丽)
Brown Wô jiào Peter Brown. (我�皮特.布朗)
Wang Bùlâng xiânsheng, huânyíng nín lái Bêijîng. (布朗先生欢迎你�北京)
Brown Xièxie. (谢谢)

In English

Wang Hello.
Brown Hello.
Wang Are you Mr Brown?
Brown Yes.
Wang My name is Wang Lili.
Brown My name is Peter Brown.
Wang Mr Brown, welcome to Beijing.
Brown Thank you.

The website also has video streams for each lesson and the four tones in Chinese pronuciation. Of course, you can always learn Chinese from me and it’s FREE :D .

This Saturday will be the Chinese Lunar New Year and the picture above the search box on the right is for the new year celebration. What does it say? “Happy New Year (Gong hè xin chun)!”

And do you know what year 2007 is?

*Photo from The Times

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China

8 Responses to “Hello, 您好, Nín Hâo!”

  1. Savvy Steward |  Feb 14, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    http://www.chinesepod.com/ is a great site to learn Mandarin as well. Has a lot of mp3 downloads.

    我学中文

  2. Moneymonk |  Feb 14, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    Thanks Sun, this is very helpful

  3. Jonathan |  Feb 14, 2007 at 10:43 pm

    Wo de zhong wen hen lan! (My Chinese stinks.) Will you really teach me? :)

    On a funnier note, if you know a person’s lunar animal sign it’s very hard for them to lie about their age.

  4. The Sun |  Feb 15, 2007 at 12:40 am

    Jonathan: If you meet someone who uses “hen lan”, you can be sure that his/her Chinese doesn’t stink :D

    And that’s why I never let anybody know my animal sign. If a guess is 12 years off, then that’s not a good guess.

  5. jersey jen |  Feb 15, 2007 at 9:48 am

    hey there, happy chinese new year to you, too!

    i think it should be “gong1 he4 xin1 chun1″ (no “g” at “xin”). i took some chinese classes in college, which is a while back :-) it also helps when my boyfriend is taiwanese.

  6. The Sun |  Feb 16, 2007 at 10:57 am

    Wow, can’t believe I made that mistake! But thanks for point it out for me and I have made the correction :D .

    Actually, after I posted the entry, I was surprised to see that there are quite some people who know Chinese, more or less. I am seriously think of posting once in a while some Chinese lessons.

  7. Yifan |  Sep 15, 2007 at 2:03 am

    Finally, I see some Chinese characters in a post. (although it’s in the language learning part :) I thought there would be a lot of Chinese reading your blog. anyway, you have done an amazing job! Really nice blog!!
    btw, I’m surprised to find out Jonathan can use the word “很烂”.

  8. Sun |  Sep 18, 2007 at 12:45 am

    I do know there are a couple of Chinese reading the stuff here, but not many. And because of the audience, I try not to use a lot Chinese here, though my connection to Chines is quite obvious :)