How to say Happy Valentine's day/Happy new year/Happy birthday in Chinese?

The grammar of sending out wishes and greetings in holidays is just this easy in Chinese:

Holiday + kuài lè

qíng rén jié kuài lè(情人节快乐!)=Happy Valentine’s day!

Read more...

Add Post To:

How to say 'Will you marry me' in Chinese

Though it's still about a month to go, it might be useful to practise this before the Valentine's day. If you want to go further from merely saying "I Love You", which we taught previously, you don't want to miss this post.

nǐ yuàn yì jià gěi wǒ mā?=Will you marry me?


(shì de,) wǒ yuàn yì. =(Yes,) I do.


Please be noted that in Chinese when we say the version of 'Yes, I do' we usually omit the 'Yes' part and just say 'wǒ yuàn yì'.

Of course, the 'do' in 'I do' does not mean 'yuàn yì' itself, but 'will' does.

Read more...

Add Post To:

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.




Read more...

Add Post To:

'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!'

Read more...

Add Post To:

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?


Read more...

Add Post To:

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

Read more...

Add Post To:

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'.

Read more...

Add Post To: