Complete Mandarin Chinese Elizabeth Scurfield
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Contents Meet the author vii Only got a minute? viii Only got five minutes? x Only got 10 minutes? xiv Introduction 1 The Chinese language, romanization, general introduction to sounds and tones, working through the book 1 Making friends (i) 18 Saying hello, observing basic courtesies, saying please and thank you, the order of names in Chinese 2 Making friends (ii) 24 Making simple introductions, exchanging greetings, addressing people correctly, making simple apologies, measure words, numbers 0 99 3 Making friends (iii) 31 Asking someone if they have children, asking how old the children are, asking if someone is married or has a partner, question words and their position in the sentence 4 Two days later 39 Inviting someone to your home, telling the time, verb-object constructions Mini revision 5 At the Lis (i) 49 Saying where you are from and what nationality you are, Chinese equivalents of foreign names, more on measure words, abbreviations, singing a Chinese song 6 At the Lis (ii) 60 Making appropriate remarks and responses during a meal, saying how not to do something, expressing the complement of degree 7 In the house 69 Describing the appearance of an apartment/house with a balcony and small garden in simple terms, describing the furniture and appliances in each room, describing the most common items in each room Contents iii
iv 8 At the Lis (iii) 79 Describing the rooms in an apartment/house, thanking your hosts for their hospitality and understanding their responses, asking questions in the form of alternatives, expressing direction towards or away from the speaker, auxiliary verbs 9 Eating out 92 Asking people if they have ever done something, saying where places and things are, talking about food and restaurants, more about foreign names expressed in Chinese, introducing the conjunctions before, when and after, comparing and contrasting, talking about your family 10 Teething troubles 112 Expressing that something is happening, more about directional endings and resultative verbs, days of the week, how to express the passive 11 Weather, dates and seasons 128 The weather and seasons in Beijing, what Chinese people do when the weather is fine, months of the year, more on the comparative, expressing the duration of something 12 In the restaurant 148 Expressing approximate numbers, saying first, second, third etc., more on the use of le, the difference between cái and jiù Halfway review 13 Grammar review 169 Common measure words, denominations of money, time words and expressions, resultative verbs, directional endings or complements, auxiliary verbs, conjugations 14 An introduction to Chinese characters 184 The earliest characters, the evolution of characters, how characters are composed, radicals or significs, how Chinese children learn to write characters, some basic rules for writing characters, recognizing some useful public notices and signs 15 Shopping 202 Asking for things in shops, asking the price, Chinese money, stroke order of useful Chinese characters and their radicals
16 Buying tickets (i) 217 Buying tickets for an entertainment, deciding which row, giving the date, more about the stroke order of characters, China s main dynasties 17 Buying tickets (ii) 228 Telephone numbers, describing characters in your Chinese name, saying something is going to happen soon, revising dates, more about radicals 18 Directions and transport 238 Famous places of interest in and around Tiananmen Square, asking for and understanding directions, points of the compass, expressing the distance between two points, place words, more about the stroke order of difficult characters 19 At the Bird s Nest National Stadium 253 Buying tickets at a tourist attraction, asking to see the catalogue, asking for an audio guide, asking for the washrooms, more about the stroke order of difficult characters, buying stamps, sending postcards, moving the direct object in front of the verb using bj, more about the stroke order of difficult characters, Chinese festivals 20 At the coffee shop 271 Guānxi in China, expressing similarities, changing money, using an ATM, opening a bank account, expressing percentages and fractions 21 Traveller s notes 284 Expressing two actions going on simultaneously, Chinese proverbs, more about abbreviations in Chinese, similarities and dissimilarities, more about the passive, yīn and yáng 22 Farewell to all that! 303 Making a toast, giving a present and making an appropriate remark when receiving one, exclamations, the Chinese zodiac, more about Chinese proverbs, more on the passive, classical Chinese poetry Key to the exercises 320 Chinese English vocabulary 351 English Chinese vocabulary 385 Character texts for Units 1 6 and 8 12 402 Index 410 Contents v
1 Making friends (i) In this unit you will learn how to say hello how to observe basic courtesies how to say please and thank you the order of names in Chinese 1 CD 1, tr 5 7 Mr King (Wáng xi1nsheng) has come to China to take up a job in a joint venture company (héz3 qcyè). Mr Li (LC xi1nsheng) is a friend and colleague of Mr King s Chinese teacher in Britain. The meeting takes place in Mr Li s office. Ll Wáng xiānsheng, nl hjo! How do you do, Mr King? King/first-born/you/good/ Wáng Ll xiānsheng, nl hjo! How do you do, Mr Li? Li/first-born/you/good/ Ll Qlng zuò. Please, sit down. Invite/sit/ Wáng Xièxie. Thank you. Thank/ Ll Qlng hē kāfēi. Have some coffee. Invite/drink/coffee/ Wáng Xièxie, wm bù hē kāfēi. No, thanks, I don t drink Thank/I/not/drink/coffee/ coffee. 18
Ll Nàme, Zhōngguó chá Would you like some xíng bu xíng? China tea then? So/middle country/tea/ be OK/not/be OK/ Wáng Xíng, xièxie nl! Wm hěn Yes, thank you, I m very xlhuan hē Zhōngguó chá. fond of China tea. Be OK/thank/you/I/very/ like/drink/middle country/tea/ xiānsheng (n) Mr, gentleman nl (ps) you hjo (adj) good qlng (v) to invite zuò (v) to sit hē (v) to drink kāfēi (n) coffee xièxie (v) to thank wm (ps) I, me bù (neg) not nàme in that case, so Zhōngguó (N) China chá (n) tea xíng (v) to be all right hěn (adv) very xlhuan (v) to like QUICK VOCAB Grammar 1 Names In Chinese, names always appear in the following order: surname, given name (Christian name), title (when used), e.g. Máo Zéd4ng tóngzhì, where Máo is the surname, Zéd4ng the given name and tóngzhì is used in place of a title and means comrade. Unit 1 Making friends (i) 19
2 Nl hjo Some Chinese adjectives can also function as verbs so hao means to be good as well as good. (Some people call such adjectives stative verbs.) Thus no separate verb for to be is used. Note word order in Wáng xi1nsheng, n# h!o. Mr King comes first in Chinese. It is very difficult to say two third tones together. When this happens, the first one is said as a second tone, but it is still marked as a third tone in the text, otherwise you might think that the syllable in question is always a second tone, which it is not: N# h!o is therefore said as Ní h!o How are you? 3 Use of qlng QCng means to invite or to request somebody to do something. Do not think of it as please as this will create problems with word order later on. Note also that Chinese verbs are invariable, which means that we use the same form throughout. 4 Negation with bù With one exception (the verb to have ydu), all verbs are negated by putting bù in front of them. 5 Questions xíng bu xíng? One common way of asking a question in Chinese is to put the positive and negative forms of the verb together in that order: Xíng bu xíng? Is it all right (or not)? The answer is not yes or no but either the positive form of the verb, in this case xíng or the negative form, i.e. bù xíng. (This construction is often referred to as the choice-type question form.) Note that the second half of the question, i.e. bù plus the verb, is sometimes written without tones, as it is normally said unstressed in everyday speech. I have followed this convention at times to familiarize you with it. 20
6 Position of adverbs Most adverbs in Chinese precede the verb, e.g. I like you very much is WD h@n xchuan nc. 7 Tone of bù Bù is normally fourth tone (`) but changes to second tone ( ) when followed by another fourth tone, e.g. bú zuò not bù zuò. Also note that in Xíng bu xíng?, bu is toneless. Exercise 1.1 Make the following sentences negative: Wm hē kāfēi Wm bù hē kāfēi. 1 WD zuò. 2 NC hao. 3 WD h2 chá. 4 NC xchuan Zh4ngguó. 5 LC xi1nsheng xièxie wd. 6 Wáng xi1nsheng qcng nc h2 Zh4ngguó chá. Exercise 1.2 Make the following statements into questions and then answer them first in the positive and then in the negative: Nl hē chá. Nl hē bu hē chá? Wm hē chá. Wm bù hē chá. 1 WD xchuan h2 k1f2i. 2 NC xièxie wd. 3 Wáng xi1nsheng qcng wd zuò. 4 LC xi1nsheng xchuan h2 shuc (water). 5 T1 (he/she) xchuan h2 Zh4ngguó chá. Unit 1 Making friends (i) 21
Exercise 1.3 Translate into colloquial English: 1 Wáng xi1nsheng qcng wd h2 Zh4ngguó chá. 2 LC xi1nsheng hbn bù xchuan Wáng xi1nsheng. 3 Wáng xi1nsheng yb (also) bù hbn xchuan LC xi1nsheng. 4 NC bú xièxie wd, nàme wd yb bú xièxie nc. 5 T1 qcng wd zuò. T1 yb qcng wd h2 k1f2i. Insight: learning tip Go back to the pronunciation guide before you start Unit 2. Listen, repeat, listen again and repeat. Make sure you are really comfortable with Unit 1 before you go onto Unit 2. On meeting people On meeting somebody for the first time on a formal occasion, the Chinese will usually shake hands and incline the head a little at the same time in greeting. This will probably be accompanied by such questions as Nín guìxìng? What is your surname? (Lit. you [polite form] expensive/honourable surname) or QCng wèn dàmíng? May I ask your (big/ famous) name? or JiEyAng, jieyang I m very pleased to meet you (Lit. long time raise head looking up to you). In less formal situations, an older person may pat a younger one on the shoulder, close friends of the same sex may hug each other and pat each other on the back a few times and say for instance, NC hái huózhe? You re still alive! or Shénme f2ng ba nc chu3 lái le? What wind blew you here? (This phrase is normally used when you meet someone unexpectedly.) Secondary school students still stand up when the teacher comes in and chorus out LAosh3 hao! How do you do teacher? (Lit. teacher good!) and the teacher will normally answer Tóngxuémen hao! How do you do students? (Lit. fellow students good). Hopefully this will give you a few guidelines which you can then supplement from your own observations. 22
TESTING YOURSELF You ve arrived at the end of Unit 1, so now for some quick revision. Please respond to the following questions in Chinese: 1 What would you say on meeting a Mr Li? 2 How would you ask him to sit down? 3 How would you ask him if he would like some coffee? 4 What would he say if he didn t drink coffee? 5 How would you ask if he would like [some]* tea instead? 6 What would he say if he didn t drink tea? 7 What would he say if he liked Chinese tea? 8 How do you say Thank you? 9 How do you say I like you? 10 How do you say I like you very much? * English words in square brackets should not be translated into Chinese. Unit 1 Making friends (i) 23