A crash Chinese course by NBC's Al Roker

This is a clap during the Beijing Olympics and in this crash class you will find something you may already be familiar with, say, Pinyin (tone) and still can learn something new:



wǒ shì ...(我是...) =wǒ jiào... (我叫) =My name is...
wǒ shì:
wǒ jiào:
Obviously, it's just a way to introduce. wǒ(我) means 'I','me', shì(是) is just 'is','am', or 'are' in English.

wǒ yào(我要)...=I want...

As you can see or guess, yào(要) means 'want'. For example, you can say: wǒ yào nà (that) běn shū=I want that book. Here, 'běn(本)' just plays the role similar to 'piece' as in 'a piece of paper'.

tīng bù dǒng(听不懂)=I don't understand.

Actually this is different from I don't know. Say if some is speaking Chinese and you have absolutely no idea what she is talking about, you should say 'tīng bù dǒng(听不懂)', as Al in the clap. In fact, some of my American friends find this a useful way to refuse to answer questions:)
wǒ è le(我饿了)= I am hungry.




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'Hello','Thank You' and 'Good Bye' in Chinese

Today we will learn some most frequently used sentences in Chinese with the following clips. Some of them are elaborated, but some are not, so I hope my explanation will help a bit.

For xiè xie (谢谢, Thank You) you might notice that for the second 'xie' there is NO tone. It is because in oral Chinese, when the word is composed of two exactly same characters, the so-called 'light tone' applies on the second one. This is the same as bà ba (爸爸, father) and mā ma (妈妈, mother) as mentioned in previous posts.

There are many ways to respond to 'xiè xie', as in English,such as 'You are welcome!', 'It's all right!'.

bù(bú) kè qi (不客气):
This has great interpretation in the clip. Notice again, though 不 has the fourth tone originally, here (and you can also listen to the man in the clip) the second tone is what we usually pronounce. Normally it's because when two four-tone characters are together, the first one changes to the second tone--just because it sounds not that awkard.

méi shì er (没事儿):

Formally, méi shì (没事) will be enough, which literally means 'There is nothing', showing that what I have done for you is no big deal--Yes, a sign of eastern humility. Also, I guess the last 'er' part may confuse you since it does NOT look stardard anyway. Well, Ture! But it's one element of oral Chinese, especailly in northern China, to make people sound more natural and fluent. There are some, but for now let's just remember this one.

bù(bú) yòng xiè (不用谢):
It literally means 'no need to thank'.

zài jiàn (再见):
This is so commonly used, yes, it means 'Good bye!'

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Counting numbers in Chinese

I remember when I started to study English counting numbers seem to be a useful way since you can almost immediately increase your vocabulary by more than 10 words in just several minutes! That is encouraging! Do you feel the same way if you can count numbers in Chinese?


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How to say 'Kong Bao Chicken' and 'Kong Fu' in Chinese?

Imagin that you go to a Chinese restaraunt and order Kong Bao Chicken, will it be better if you can use standard Mandarin to say it?

Well, there are a lot of such words in English, Like 'Kong Fu', 'To fu' and the like. So how to pronounce them correctly with Pinyin (provided that you are interested in it)? I will list a bunch of them, hoping someday it will help you.

Kong Fu -- gōng fū (fu, if it's light tone, usally applied on the last character)

To Fu -- dòu fǔ (fu)

Lao-tzu -- lǎo zǐ

Tao Te Ching -- dào dé jīng

Also it's said that 'Long Time No See' also comes from Chinese, since it perfectly matches what we say

Here, jiǔ (久) means 'a long time'. hǎo (好) is something like 'what a' in 'what a good day', though you might already know that hǎo (好) also has the meaning of 'goodness' as in 'good plan'.
bù (不) means NO! We will talk about that more later. About the tone, as you notice, is 2nd but not 4th in 'hǎo jiǔ bú jiàn'. This is because in oral Chinese, we just speak that way. If there has to be a rule, someone else has come up with this: when two 4th-tone characters are pronunced together, it 'becomes' 2nd+4th.
Finally, can you try to figure out how 'Kong Fu Panda' sounds like in Chinese if I tell you that xióng māo (熊猫) is just Panda in Mandarin?

OK, now you can check it with us:) gōng fū (fu) xióng māo

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How to say 'I LOVE You' in Chinese?

Do not recognize Chinese characters? That's fine! Let's blurt out Chinese first!

From now on, 'Daily Bite' will introduce a series of useful sentences denoted by Pinyin. I hope in this way you can gradually accumulate more Chinese in the sense that you can actually speak!


Even Valentine's day will only come in about 2 weeks, but I guess it might take a longer time to speak this correctly, so I just post this at this 'early' stage. So do you want to know how to say 'I LOVE YOU!' in Chinese?

In case that you may forget how to follow Pinyin to pronounce them, try the 'Pinyin Pronunciation' under the 'Useful Link' to practise.

As you may already see, the 3 characters just match the 3 English letters perfectly and their mearning is just obvious.

Below is a video of a Chinese song 'Say Love Me' (shuō ài wǒ) with Pinyin subtitle. Thus, even you don't know what it actually means, you can follow the singer (Jolin ) to sing this song with the help of Pinyin! Want to try that out?

CC's Note:

1. There are some typos in the lyrics of the video at (0:31/3:44), where the last one should be 'jing' instead of 'jiang'. At (0:38/3:44) 'gon' should be 'gan'. One minute later(1:30,2:46/3:44), the 'ning' is 'ming'.

2. The singer is Jolin Tsai. Well, in Pinyin, this 'Tsai' is 'cài'.

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Pinyin-summary

I think it is useful to collect those posts about Pinyin in a single post and put it under the 'useful posts'.
It is reasonable to know why you may want to study Pinyin, when there are alternative solutions to the phonetic system of Mandarin. This brief introduction may give you some feeling.
You can go over the 3 components of Pinyin in more detail with our hints and audio file.
Initials:
b p m f
d t n l
g k h
g q x
z c s
zh ch sh r y w
Finals:
All finals are integrated in this post.
Tones:
In standard Mandarin, there are only 4 of them, so not that hard.
Be a bit careful that the following may sound a little beyond your expectation when they are combined together:
zhi chi shi ri zi ci si
Now all you have to do is just to link them together, and practice, practice and practice! I will post the pinyin for dialogues and words soon, you just try your best to mimic. This tool is useful and you can listen to the standard pronunciation of those characters that you are not sure about.
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Chinese New Year celebrations around the world

A collection of pictures about how people celebrate this festival:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/jan/26/1?picture=342327786
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How to make Chinese 'Fu' poster?

Last post introduces many red items that are characteristics of Spring Festival, a tradition of Chinese new year. There is one single Chinese character that is expected to be seen on the doors of Chinese families. That one is '福' (fú), meaning 'Luck', 'good fortune', and so on.

Some people prefer putting the 'Fu' poster upside down, believing this would lead 'Fu' to come. The reason is that when 'Fu' is upside down means '福倒'(fú dào), which sounds like '福到' (fú dào), which just means 'Fu' comes! If you remember that '福'(fú) is just 'Luck', you will see why it means so much.

Well, do you want to make one all by yourself? Just prepare:

(1) two kinds of paper (red and yellow);

We use the wrap paper which you can easily find in any stationary store. BTW, in Qing dynasty, only the emperor can use the color of yellow, so yellow represents the imperial power.

(2)tools: scissors/knife,pen,glue;

We will show you how to make it come ture step by step.

1. First, please download this template of 'Fu' and then print it out using an A4 paper;

2. Cut the '福' out of that paper like this:

3. Now put the cut '福' on the back of the yellow paper because you need to either hold them firmly or just fixate them so that you can draw the outline of the character '福' as in the following graph. Yes, it's just the mirror image of the normal '福'.

If you pay more attention in this figure, you will find our red X notation, meaning that you need to cut out this part.

4. Now just cut along the outline you just drawed, then you can creat this '福' out of your yellow paper.
5. Then cut out a square from the red paper, and paste the yellow 'Fu' on it, and you are done! You can adjust the length of the red square. For us, we choose 26cm.
This is our product:
How about yours?

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Let's get Red!--Spring Festival!

This season is Houston Rockets' Get Red season:While for Chinese people, each year, around late January and early February (according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar), it is the RED SEASON! And RED is just the theme during this 'Spring Festival'--the start of Chinese New Year. Red stands for foutune, luck, love, happiness... This is the big time for Chinese families to get together, just like Christmas in this sense.

Some stars already join in this RED trend:

Kobe sends out his greetings:

with Chinese Tang-zhuang (táng zhuāng) in ‘科比中国之家’(Lit. Kobe's Home in China)

Paris Hilton tried Chipao (qí páo) in Shanghai in 2008:

Below are some RED things that are typical in Spring Festival:

duì lián:

Chinese Knot (zhōng guō jié):

Latern (dēng long):

Zigong Latern Festival (dēng huì):

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Pinyin-Link them together!

Now we already learned 'Initials', 'Finals' and 'Tones', it is time for us to combine these 3 things and speak Chinese out!
Question: Can you try to pronounce 'nǐ hǎo' and 'zài jiàn'?

nǐ hǎo =Hello!=How are you doing?
zài jiàn=Bye!=See you!

I would like to highly recommend you go to this site to practise all these combinations. Just by clicking THREE parts you can listen to the standard pronunciation:

For example, if you want to hear what nǐ sounds like, then:
1. Click 'n' under initials;
2. Click 'i' under finals;
3. Click '3rd' in tones.

CC's note:
1. One 'problem' for newcomes of Pinyin is that they feel a little frustrated when it comes to this part to combine initials and finals since some initials do NOT go along with some finals. Well, please relax!!! This is not a rule for you to learn by rote, nor to confuse you.

2. Another good feature of the above page is that you can find out what combinations are valid or not, which are differentiated by bold and shaded fonts. By speaking instead of merely memorizing lots of times, I think it would be natural for you to see which initial and final are a good match.

3. The following syllables may sound a bit beyond your expectation:

zhi chi shi ri zi ci si

For example, 'shi' does NOT sound like 'she' (in English), when you try to combine 'sh' and 'i'.

You are welcome to experiment and then correct your own pronunciation as much as possible. Anyway, please practise!

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Pinyin-tone

Writing does not help too much here, so I will keep it simple:

1. 4 tones in Standard Mandarin:



2. It's something like this:

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Pinyin-Finals

Today, let's just finish all finals and end the seemingly boring foundation lecture before the Chinese new year (In the 'Chinese Calander' on the right, it begins on 26th, Jan.)!

There are more finals than initials and they seem to be more messy, but I decide to list all of them in this single post so that you can keep checking them back. I think after the excercise from initials you should be a bit familiar with the Pinyin Phonetic system and be aware of its difference from English. Smilarly, what you need to do again is just:

Listen->Mimic->Practice->Correct

Hopefully before Chinese new year we can learn some simple greetings based on this Pinyin system. So now let's check them out one by one:

a o e i u ü
--These 6 are the basics. The following can be regarded as combinations of them.

ai ei ao ou

--Take 'ai' for example, it's just combining the pronunciation of 'a' and 'i', try that out, do you make it?

ia ie ua uo ue(üe)

iao iou uai uei

--It appears to be complicated, but it's nothing but combination! For instance, iao=i+ao, right?:)

an ian uan üan

en in un ün

ang iang uang ong

eng ing ueng iong

In order not to scare you guys away, I will simply link you to Wiki for the tips of pronouncing finals.
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Pinyin-Initial-zh ch sh r y w

zh ch sh r
Now we are about to finish all the initials, and this group is also pretty special since some of them seldom (actually to my knowledge, NEVER) appear in English as par of normal words, say, zh. And for ch, sh and r, the way to pronounce is totally different. So you are encouraged to get some feeling of them here.
To pronounce these 4 sounds correctly, you need to curl you tongue. And the with the following tips you can get there.
zh: Like the 'dr' in 'drink'.
ch: Similar to the 'ch' in 'Chinese'. Notice, not exactly the same! Curl your tongue a little bit!
sh: Similar to the 'sh' in 'shoot'. Again, culr your tongue:)
r: Similar to the 'r' in 'rain'.

y w
No surprise, they just sound like the letters y and w as in English:
y: Like the 'y' in 'yes'.
w: Like the 'w' in ''we.

CC's Note:
1. These 4 sounds are retroflexed, so make sure you feel your tongue curled when you read them.
2. For r, please be noted that in English when you pronounce something like rain, your tongue is hung in your mouth without touching anywhere inside. But to pronounce the Pinyin r, you just make the front surface of your tongue close to the roof of your mouth, as well as the curling advice.


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Pinyin-Initial-z c s

z c s
This group also deserves some notice in the sense you want to differentiate (especially) z and c from their pronunciation in English. You can try to listen to them here and compare the differences.
z: Like the 'ds' in 'woods'.
c: Like the 't's' in 'That's great!'. Compared to z, c is more aspirated.
s: Similar to the 's' in 'speak' as in English.

CC's Note:
For z, do not confuse it with the 'z' in 'zoo'.
For c, do not make the 'k' sound as in cat, capital and so on.
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Pinyin-Initial-j q x

j q x
Though appeared in English, these three may sound the most different in Pinyin. Anyway, please check out their pronunciation here.

To well pronounce them, please be noted to put your tongue tip a bit below your lower teech.

j: Similar to the 'j' in 'jeep', but not in such an 'exaggerated' way.
q:Similar to the 'ch' in 'cheese'.
x:Similar to the 'sh' in 'sheet'.

CC's Note:
For j, do not confuse it with the 'j' in 'jalapeno'.
For q, do not confuse it with the 'q' in 'queen'.
For x, do not confuse it with the 'x' in 'fax'.

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Pinyin-Initial-g k h

g k h
These three are relatively easy since they are almost the same as in English, but still you are encouraged to get a feeling of what they sound like. Listen here!
g: Similar to the 'g' in 'great', but is more like a soft unaspirated 'k' as in 'skate'.
k: Like the 'k' in 'kill', but notice that it is aspirated.
h: Similar to the 'h' in 'hoof', but as you mat notice according to the audio, there is somewhat more friction.

CC's Note:
So far you may feel what you have been practising is a bit mechanical and it's not even like what Chinese people are speaking anyway. It's true, since we are doing it separately. Later we will make the combination and you will have a lot of fun:)

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Pinyin-Initial-d t n l

d t n l
The audio file is here. Just listen, mimic and correct your own pronunciation.
d: Like the 'd' in 'dog'. (unaspirated)
t: Similar to the 't' in 'target' (aspirated)
n: Similar to the 'n' in 'no'.
l: Similar to the 'l' in 'lead'.

CC's Note:
1. For the definition of unaspirated and aspirated, please refer to last post 'Pinyin-Initial-b p m f';
2. 'l' in English has two kinds of pronunciation, like the two 'l's in ''legal'. In Pinyin, the 'l' sounds like the INITIAL l instead of the final one.





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Pinyin-Initial-b p m f

b p m f
You can listen and practise here. Just press the little loudspeaker button and you can hear it.

b: Similar to the 'b' in 'bike', but is more accurately the 'p' in 'spelling' in the sense that it is unaspirated.
p: Like the 'p' in 'pie'. Notice now this 'p' is aspirated.
m:Just as 'm' in 'mind' as in English.
f: Just as 'f' in 'fake' as in English.

CC's Note:
The aspirated/unaspirated distinction is a mojor feature of Chinese you may want to notice. The difference just lies in whether there is an absense of aspiration. For aspirated sounds, like 'p', you need to add a strong puff of air, while for unaspirated ones, like 'b', you better release less or no air. It's easy to compare, just put your hand in front of your mouth when you practise these two and feel the difference in the flow of air from it.

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Pinyin-Introduction

Pinyin is the standard romanization system used in China, and you may find it's somewhat similar to the English counterpart in either spelling, writing or pronunciation. However, it is most important to notice the difference
Accurate pronunciation at the outset should never be overstated. There are many books you can refer to, but here I just want to make it simple and I would like you to follow those steps when practise pronunciation:

Listen->Mimic->Practice->Correct

Just repeat the above steps until you find yourself speak exactly the same as the sample sound.

CC's Note:
Do NOT even think about the corresponding characters and their meaning when you pronounce some words. Just focus on the pronunciation first!

A syllable is composed of three parts:
(1) Initial;
(2) Final;
(3) Tone (4 of them).
For example:
wō contains 3 parts:
w (initial) + o (final) + -(tone)

Our experience is that people usually confuse (1) and (2) with their home tongue (e.g., the pronunciation of 'j'), and cannot remember what the 4 tones sound like. It can be overcome just by some effort.
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Three role models

Before we officially get started, I would like to share with you some people who can speak perfect Chinese with English as their native language. You might not need to be as good as them, since maybe half of that is way more enough, but at least it shows that it is absolutely feasible to make it. OK, now let's check them out:

1. 大山(dà shān* Lit: Big Mountain)-Mark Rowswell
There should be no doubt that he is the most famous and popular foreigner in China but I believe less than 0.001% of us know that his real name is Mark Henry Rowswell! Back to 20 years ago, he was the first foreigner many Chinese people had ever seen. Many people (including me), watch his program to study English. You can have a look at how he speaks Chinese just with the finger tip. Below is his performance in a 'solo Xiangsheng'(单口相声, one kind of Xiangsheng), a style similar to talkshow, with the aim to send audiences laughters:


2. 陆克文(lù kèwén)-Kevin Rudd
He is definitely the one who speaks the best Chinese among prime ministers or presidents (of course, I deliberately rule out President Hu Jintao:). He has the academic background in Chinese and has done some profound research back in university. Below is his speech in Beijing University in 2008:



3. 江喃(jiāng nán)-Jonathan Kott
To be frank, I was deeply shocked when I first saw his TV program because I have never seen a foreigner who can speak Sichuanhua (Sichuanese) so well. I am from Sichuan, a beautiful province in Southwestern China, and I have to admit that the first responce that my friends and I had when we knew such a guy is like crazy, especiall when things that come out of this guy's mouth are in your local language. Here is a clip:



I hope you can speak better Chinese than them someday! Enjoy!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*: This is Pinyin spelling which we will come to soon.






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We will start with Pinyin

As you can find more detail in Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin), this is the phonetic notation for standard Mandarin. And honestly, that is what we learned in elementary school where we started to get exposed to Mandarin.

There are some other alternative approaches to master Chinese, and I will explain why I choose this way. Mandarin is the official language in Mainland China, the dominant one in Chinese community. Cantonese is used in Hong Kong as the official one, and it has a phonetic nonation based on English instead of Pinyin. That is way you may find the forms of English representation of their Chinese names vary a lot--just because they are under different phonetic system.

Take the famous Hong Kong-borne movie star Chow Yun-fat (This is his original name and if you pronounce following that, you are speaking Cantonese) for example, in Pinyin the name should be Zhōu Rùnfā.

We will talk more about this rule of pronunciation in the following days. It is not hard at all. As long as you grasp these basic skills, you can start to speak Chinese soon. So are you ready?

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Route Map

Due to our experience in studying and teaching English, we believe the most important thing to learn a second language is to blurt out! There might be things like grammar, vocabulary and so on. But we all know that memorizing alone is almost useless on a practical basis, and you can remember it for your lifetime if you use certain word or phrase correctly in some occasion.

So we will start with Pinyin, the way to pronounce Mandarin. Learning this you can lay the foundation to continue studying Chinese characters by any standard dictionary (there are alternatives, of course, and I will explain that later in the next article).

Then we can study (and we hope you can memorize) some useful everyday dialogue and words (nouns), which you can try to use either to you Chinese friends or in China town. Please note that so far there is no special emphasis on Chinese character so far. We think that you will find them interesting in this process and the only thing left is to memorize how it looks like--You already know its pronunciation, meaning, aren't you?

Along the way, we will help you keep accumulating the core elements of (everyday) Chinese and hope that it will build the blocks for you to really master this language.

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Welcome!

Hello, everyone! This is an updated blog to help you gradually learn Chinese with less pain. My wife and I are now teaching Chinese in Texas, and this blog is inspired by our lovely students Aly, Kelly and Parke (Thanks you guys, this is a brilliant idea:). And as the TA of my wife, I am responsible for managing this site. Also, I will try to gather and integrate useful resources online so that you can get used to the most efficient tools to study Chinese. Those resources include:

1. Our lecture contents.

2. Online resource:
a. Introduction of handy software;
b. Videos:
(1) I will try to collect all the videos mentioned in http://lesspainchinese.magnify.net/, but some may still omit, so the best is to check the original article. The shortcut of this site is appeared as a banner under the HEADER.
(2) I will write corresponding 'lecture notes' to some great video resources online (sometimes upon request). I cannot just upload them to the above mentioned site due to the copyright problem.


Besides the seemingly boring grammar (of course, grammar is always seemed to be like that, unfortunetaly), something like the culture, current trend will be introduced so that you won't find you are studying rocket science, and I hope you will find this site, most of the time, user-friendly:).

BTW, we experience the same while we study English and find such an eclectic and integrated (and maybe relatively casual) way would stimulate us from different aspects to keep us awake and fresh, and we hope this works well for you, too!

OK, we are about to get started. There will be more continured...
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