Lesson sections :
 Conversation
Conversation
sentences
Language
points
Vocabulary
and phrases
Add
lesson to flash cards |
Language Points
| |
Answers with the
affirmative
As mentioned in Lesson one,
the question “nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà ma (你会说普通话吗？)
(can you speak Chinese?) can be answer in the
affirmative with “huì” (会). The speaker answers
this with “huì yīdiǎn, búshì hěnhǎo” (会一点，不是很好).
“Yīdiǎn” (一点) roughly means “a little”, but
literally means “one dot”. “Yīdiǎn” (一点) often
follows verbs. So, “huì yīdiǎn” (会一点) is a bit
like saying, ‘I can speak a bit”. “búshì hěnhǎo”
(不是很好) means ”not very good”. Statements like this
are often used to make the speaker seem modest,
which is a key component of Chinese
culture.
Where are you from? “Nǐ shì
nǎli rén?” (你是哪里人?)
“nǐ shì nǎli rén?”
(你是哪里人？) is “Where are you from?”. But literally
is “You are where people”? The answer, in this
case, is “wǒ shì běijīngrén” (我是北京人) “I’m a
Beijing person.” We have said that to describe a
person’s nationality, you simply take the name of
the country, for example, America, “měiguó” (美国)
and add the word people “rén” (人). The same is
also true of cities. Thus, a person from Běijīng
would be a Běijīngrén (北京人).
Běijīng
(北京)
Běijīng (北京) literally means
“North Capital”. It is wise to look at a map and
see all the different characters that compose the
names of Chinese places. For example, “henan” (河南)
is a province in the central part of China. If one
knows that “he” (河) means “river” and “nan” means
“south”, then one can figure out what the province
“河北” means. Since “he” means “river” and “běi” is
the same “běi” means “north,” we know that “hebei”
means “river north”, because it is located north
of the Yellow River.
Pleased to meet
you
“Wǒ hěn gāoxìng rènshi nǐ”
(我很高兴认识你) means “Glad to meet you”. This is
usually followed with “wǒ yě hěn gāoxìng rènshi
nǐ” (我也很高兴认识你) meaning “I am also glad to meet
you.” Quite often one person will make a
statement, and then another speaker will say the
same statement and add “yě” (也), meaning “also.”
|
| |
