Learn Chinese for beginners | Lesson 1: Chinese Phrases - 5 formulas to describe statuses
How to learn Chinese for beginners? In today’s video, I’m gonna show you 5 different sentences as Chinese Phrases for any Chinese beginners to start from scratch
Learn Chinese for beginners | Lesson 1: Chinese Phrases - 5 formulas to describe statuses
These simple Chinese sentences work like Lego stones so that you only need to replace the single elements without making any changes. It's easy to understand and practice for Chinese beginners.
In my last video, I explained that you need a language system to build sentences based on the Chinese language, not English. So I am now delivering some real stuff for you to actually get started: 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘀.
There are many of them, together, they build a system that I call the “blueprint” for the Chinese language. But since the blueprint covers a huge variety of sentences that could be too overwhelming to start with, I decided to break it down into small formulas that I can cover in a less-than-20 minute-video each time so that you can always follow.
𝟭. 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗮𝗺 𝗜?
I am Chi from https://deepling.org. I'm a course-designer to make Chinese easy. Since 2014, I have been developing online courses to make the Chinese language easy for beginners. I made a new year resolution for 2021 to make my content available in English and free on YouTube.
In today’s video, I’m gonna show you 5 different formulas (Animation 3: Illustration of the 5 formulas) for you to build 100s of new sentences based on them.
𝟮. Chinese Phrase 𝟭: 𝗻𝗶 𝗵𝗮𝗼 𝗺𝗮?
The original use of “Hello” in Chinese is actually “How are you?”, which is the first basic sentence that you can use as a formula. Based on “nihao ma?”, you can build 100s of sentences to ask about the status of something.
ni hao ma?
“Ma” works as a question mark that always requires an answer with yes or no. We call sentences like this “yes/no questions” in our blueprint.
Ni means you, hao means good. Ni hao ma means you good huh? The more exact translation would be: You are fine, right?
And here are the changes you can make:
Ni hao ma?
Ni leng ma?
Ni re ma?
Ni gaoxing ma?
Ni shangxin ma?
Basically, any adjective you can find works here at the position of “good”. If you replace the word “good” with another adjective, you can ask anything you want.
𝟯.Chinese Phrase 𝟮: 𝘄𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗮𝗼
Wo hen hao is one of the most important sentences in the Chinese language because instantly, you can describe anything you want positively.
If you mastered this one, you can describe anything you want, positively. It works just like the last sentence “ni hao ma”. Just replace the words with similar ones.
Since this basic sentence uses very to connect words and describes statuses, we call them “very status”
Here you can replace “I” with any nouns, and “good” with any adjectives.
wo hen hao
tianqi hen re.
jintian hen leng.
chuntian hen mei.
gongyuan hen da.
xuexiao hen yuan.
Mangguo hen tian.
… anything you can think of.
𝟰. Chinese Phrase 𝟯: 𝘄𝗼 𝗯𝘂 𝘁𝗮𝗶 𝗵𝗮𝗼.
Bu tai hao literally means: not too good.
So you can say:
wo bu tai hao.
Diannao bu tai gui.
Dianying bu tai haokan.
It also explains why television is another perfect example to show how English and Chinese work differently as two main languages.
𝟱. Chinese Phrase 𝟰: 𝘄𝗼 𝗯𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝗼
The 4th formula describes a "simply not" status.
wo bu hao
tianqi bu tai re.
tianqi bu re.
jintian bu tai leng.
jintian bu leng.
chuntian bu tai mei.
chuntian bu mei.
gongyuan bu tai da.
gongyuan bu da.
xuexiao bu tai yuan.
xuexiao bu yuan.
mangguo bu tai tian.
mangguo bu tian.
𝟲. Chinese Phrase 𝟱: 𝘆𝗶 𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗲 𝗯𝘂 - 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀
The highest degree for a negative description is the “not at all” status.
It always works with the expression
Yidian ye bu
Or
Yidianer ye bu
Yidian ye bu is almost identical with “not at all”. That’s why we call it a “not-at-all” status statement. Use it to emphasize the status “not at all”.
Yidian stands for “one point”, which means “a little”. “Ye” means “also”, which could be understood as “even” here. Bu still means “not”. Together, it’s “not even a little bit”, so not at all.
Wo yidian ye bu hao.
Simply add “yidian ye” before “bu” to emphasize how “not” fine you are: Not even a little bit. And this applies to all the sentences you have just learned before:
tianqi yi dian ye bu re.
jintian yi dian ye bu leng.
chuntian yi dian ye bu mei.
gongyuan yi dian ye bu da.
xuexiao yi dian ye bu yuan.
mangguo yi dian ye bu tian.
𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆:
In this video, we have introduced two categories from the blueprint: A statement and a question.
The Question was :
𝗔 𝘆𝗲𝘀/𝗻𝗼 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗻𝗶 𝗵𝗮𝗼 𝗺𝗮?
And the statements were all status statements. They are:
𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: 𝗪𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗮𝗼
𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: 𝗪𝗼 𝗯𝘂 𝘁𝗮𝗶 𝗵𝗮𝗼
𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝘆-𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: 𝗪𝗼 𝗯𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝗼
𝗡𝗼𝘁-𝗮𝘁-𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: 𝗪𝗼 𝘆𝗶 𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗲 𝗯𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝗼.
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