Measure Words

Following on from the last lesson, today we are going to talk about measure words, which are a special grammar part of Chinese language.

Let’s answer the following questions:

• 1^st question: What are measure words?

An example in English: you can’t say “two paper”, but “two pieces of paper”, so “piece” here is a measure word. But the difference is that in English there is only a small number of nouns needed for measure words, but in Chinese every noun needs a measure word.

• 2^nd question: When do we use measure words?

A literal meaning of measure words, you use measure words when you are counting or pointing:

Examples: one person—yī ge rén

3 pizzas – sān ge pī sā

2 pieces of pizza – liǎng kuài pī sā (note: before all the counting word, “2” will be “liǎng” not “èr”)

This person –zhè ge rén

That person –nà ge rén

• 3^rd question: Which counting word do we use?

By the shape, quality, or characteristic of the things, they will have different counting words.

Here are some common counting words for different things:

Bēi Cup or glass	Yī bēi kā fei Yī bēi hóng chá Yī bēi bīng shuǐ	A cup of coffe A cup of black tea A glass of cold water
Píng bottle	Yī píng bīng pí jiǔ Yī píng hóng pú tāo jiǔ	A bottle of cold beer A bottle of red wine
Kuài Cube, part or piece	Yī kuài tang Yī kuài pī zā Yī kuài dàn gāo	A cube of sugar A piece of pizza A piece of cake
Tīng Can	Yī tīng kě lè Yī tīng pí jiǔ	A can of cola A can of beer
Tiáo Things with long in shape	Yī tiáo kù zi Yī tiáo pí dài Yī tiáo xiàng liàn	A pair of pants A belt A neck-lace
Jiàn for clothes, item	Yī jiàn yī fu Yī jiàn T xuè Yī jiàn wài tào	A piece of clothing A T-shirt A coat
Shuāng Pair	Yī shuāng xié zi Yī shuāng kuài zi	A pair of shoes A pair of chopsticks
Zhāng Flat things like a sheet	Yī zhāng míng piàn Yī zhāng zhǐ Yī zhāng zhào piān	A namecard A piece of paper A photo
Běn Things with pages	Yī běn shū Yī běn zá zhì	A book A magazine
Zhī Small animals	Yī zhī gǒu Yī zhī māo Yī zhī niǎo	A dog A cat A bird
Ge For things has no specific measure word, which actually the most common measure word	Yī ge rén Yī ge hàn bǎo bao	A person A hamburger

• 4^th question: Any tips for learning measure words?

As a beginner learner, measure words are a challenging thing, my suggestion is: if you can remember the different measure words, it will be great! But if you can’t, don’t worry, you can just use “ge” for most of the things, it may not be correct, but people will still be able to understand you; better than you don’t use any word between the number and the noun that people may not even able to understand your meaning.

And when you read or listen, if there is a word between the number and the nouns that you don’t understand, it probably is a measure word, so it won’t affect you to understand the rest of the sentence.

Time

Today we are going to talk about some time expressions:
Diǎn-o’clock
7:00 – qī diǎn
9:00 – jiǔ diǎn
Please try: 11:00, 5:00, 12:00
Fēn – minute
7:10 – qī diǎn shí fēn
9:25 – jiǔ diǎn èr shí wǔ fēn
Please try: 10:20, 3:40, 12:55
Bàn – half
7: 30—qī diǎn bàn or qī diǎn sān shí fēn
Kè – quarter
7:15 – qī diǎn yī kè (one quarter)
How about 7:45 then?...... Yes, qī diǎn sān kè (three quarters)
Note: Bàn for half you can use anywhere, while kè for quarter is only used for time expressions
2:00, you can say “èr diǎn”, it is understandable, but not accurate, we’d better say “liǎng diǎn”. As before all measure words, 2 will be pronounced as “liǎng”. (Please refer to the next blog for more about measure words).


Days of the week
Xīng qi (shing chee)-- week
We consider Monday as the first day of the week, so Monday is “ xīng qi yī”, so:
Tuesday – xīng qi èr
Wednesday – xīng qi sān
Thursday – xīng qi sì
Friday – xīng qi wǔ
Saturday – xīng qi liù
Sunday – xīng qi qī ?? Sorry, we have some change here, as you can see if we keep counting till the seventh day of the week, it would be “xīng qi qī”, but there are two “qī” together, doesn’t sound good, so we change “qī” to “tiān”, so Sunday is “xīng qi tiān” . “tiān” means “sky; heaven”.
I believe that most of people know “ xīn tiān dì”, “tiān” means “sky”; “dì” means “earth”, so between the sky and earth, is the world, and “xīn” means “new”, so “xīn tiān dì” means “new world”.

Nián – year
And you just need to read the digits of the year, for example, this year 2008 is read “èr líng líng bā nián”.

Yuè – month
Similar like the days of the week, January is the first month of the year, so:
Yī yuè – January
Èr yuè – Feburary
Sān yuè – March
Sì yuè – April
……
So keep counting till shí èr yuè – December
Logic and easy, isn’t it, I still remember that it took me a lot of time remember the twelve English words for these 12 month.

Hào – literally means “number”
Yī hào, means “the number 1 day of the month”
October 1st, is “shí yuè yī hào”

In Chinese the time expression follows the rule: from big to small, or from general to specific. It will be year-month- day. For instance, October 3, 2008, is “ 2 0 0 8 nián 10 yuè 3 hào”
You may notice that all the time expressions we talked about above are related to numbers, so it is very important to add “nián, yuè, or hào’’ after the numbers to show what time you are talking about.

Also, similar as time expression, the address in Chinese follows the same rule: from big to small, so the address should be: China, Shanghai, ** district, **Road, No. **, Building **, Room**.

To be or not to be (polite) that is the question

Today we are going to learn some basic courtesy phrases.

Greetings:

Nǐ hǎo - Hello. I think everyone knows this saying, literally translated as “you good” meaning “Hello”.

Nǐ hǎo ma? – How are you? “ma” is a “yes” or “no” question word that you can add at the end of the sentence to make it a question. For instance: “Nǐ shì Kelly.” means “you are Kelly.” while “nǐ shì Kelly ma?” means “Are you Kelly?”

Okay, if people say “Nǐ hǎo ma?” to you, you can answer back:

“Wǒ hěn hǎo”(I am good), if you are doing fine. But if you are not, you can say:

“Mǎ ma hū hu” (so so), literally translated as “horse horse tiger tiger” and I believe that this phrase can be listed as one of the top 10 popular expressions among westerners. You are probably wondering why horse and tiger can form the meaning of “so so”. Here is a short story to explain why: In ancient China, there was a painter who drew a horse, and he was very happy with his work, so he asked his friends to come over and appreciate his work, but after seeing the painter, one of his friends said: “The tiger you drew is very good!”…so which means his painting was actually just “so so”.

Or you can answer “Wǒ hěn máng” (I’m very busy) or “Wǒ hěn lèi” (I’m very tired”

Apologies:

Duì bù qǐ—Sorry, or excuse me.

Méi guān xi – Doesn’t matter.

Méi wèn tí—No problem.

Appreciation:

Xiè xie – thanks

Bù kè qi / bú yòng xiè -- you are welcome

but literally these mean “no need to be polite / no need to say thank you”.

In China, somehow “politeness” = “distance”. We think if a person is being too polite, it makes people feel like this person is trying to put certain distance between himself and the others. So very different from western culture, in Chinese tradition, the closer you are, the less polite you are. For example, I hardly say “thank you” or “sorry” to my parents…difficult to imagine, huh?

It took me quite a while to get used to saying “thank you” all the time when I just started to work with westerners, and now after many years, saying “thank you” is like a natural reflex for me, but when I sometimes say thank you to my oldest friends from my school days, they feel very uncomfortable and distant and look at me as if I’m a stranger !

So I think the ideal situation for our society should be: being polite to taxi drivers, waiters, shop assistants, Ayis, etc, but not being too polite to your friends and families. Easy to do?

So when to be polite or not, that is the question! What do you think?

Numbers continued - What’s your telephone number?

In our last session , we learned how to count from 0 to 10 . This session we are going to practice numbers and the best way to do that is through telephone numbers. But before we practice, there is one thing you need to notice. When there is a “1” (yī) in the telephone number, very often we will pronounce it as “yāo”, so as to avoid any confusion with the number 7 (qī), which, if not said clearly sounds similar. For instance, if a telephone number is 121, you will read it as “yāo èr yāo”, but if you keep it as “yī èr yī”, people will still understand you. Now please read aloud your home, office and cell phone number for practice.

Let’s move up to 2 digit numbers today.

11=10+1, “shí yī”

12=10+2, “shi èr”

13=10+3, “shí sān”

……

Keep counting to 19 “shí jiǔ”

20=2 x 10, “èr shí”

30=3 x 10, “sān shí”

…..

How about 21?...Yes, “èr shí yī”, like 2 x 10 + 1; one more example:

35 = 3 x 10 + 5, it’s “sān shí wǔ”, very logical, isn’t it? So just remember the rule! Congratulations, you can count from 1 to 99 in Chinese now!

Ok, let’s do some more exercises, please say the following numbers in Chinese: 45, 69, 87, 17, 90, 38, 27, 14.

Ready for bigger numbers?... “Bǎi” means hundred, so 100 is “yī bǎi”, 200 is “èr bǎi”…… 231 is “èr bǎi sān shí yī”, please note if it is 105, you need to read “0” out, so it will be “yī bǎi líng wǔ”, otherwise it means 150 “yī bǎi wǔ”. Let’s do some dictation this time, please write down what these numbers are:

sì bǎi sān shí jiǔ =

liù bǎi èr shí=

qī bǎi líng sì=

wǔ bǎi shí sān=

bā bǎi bā shí yī=

What is your telephone number?

What's your lucky number?

Pick your lucky number!

We are going to talk about numbers today:

1 yī (ee)

2 èr (r)

3 sān

4 sì (think “i” is silent, just “s” itself in “smile”)

5 wǔ (woo)

6 liù (Leo)

7 qī (chee)

8 bā

9 jiǔ (Joe)

10 shí (sch)

you may notice when we are in the market, we often use our hand guesture to express numbers, and the way is quite different than the western ways.

yī èr sān sì wǔ

liùqī bā jiǔ shí

Now let’s talk about the lucky and unlucky numbers in Chinese.

Do you know which number is considered as the luckiest number in China? Here is a hint, the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics is: 2008, 8^th month, 8^th day, at 8pm… So, yes, the luckiest number goes to 8. Why? Because in some of the dialects, the pronunciation for 8 is similar as the pronunciation for “get rich”. So if you see somebody’s phone number or car plate number has 8s, then they must have paid a lot of money to have it.

How about the unlucky number? It is 4, because if you change the tone from “sì” to “sǐ”, it means “die” or “death”, so that’s why you will find some of the buildings have no 4^th floor, 14^th floor, or any floors with “4”. So when you pronounce “4”, make sure you get the correct tone.

About some other numbers:

6 is also considered as good, which means “things go smoothly”, and it is also my favourite number J.

7 (qī) has similar sound as “eat”(chī), and as we all know Chinese people love eating, so of course it is a good number as well. If you live in Shanghai since last year, you probably heard a telephone number 57575777 whenever you took a white taxi, and right after this number you will hear “wǒ chī wǒ chī wǒ chī chī chī” which means “I eat I eat I eat eat eat”, so guess what telephone number it is?...... Bingo, it belongs to a restaurant!

9 (jiǔ) has the same sound as the meaning “long” when referring to time and we all want to have a long life, long marriage, and long business relationship, etc. Therefore it is good too.

Now can you tell me what is your lucky number...?

Tones - don't be afraid.

Hello, everybody, welcome to my blog.

I’m Kelly Wang, a Chinese teacher for westerners for more than 5 years. The reason I start this blog is that I want to share with anyone who is interested in learning Chinese with learning tips, my teaching experience and the Chinese culture that are related to this language.

As China’s development has been so fast these years, learning Chinese has become the new fashion, and is essential for business. So are you ready to be IN?

Let’s start our first lesson with the introduction of Pinyin. Pin means spell, and Yin means sound, so spell the sound.

The special thing of Pinyin is the tones, which considered the most difficult part for most Chinese learners.

First let’s take a look at the difference among these tones.

mā, 1^st tone, flat tone, it is high and long, like when you are singing “ahhh…”

má, 2^nd tone, up tone, it is short, like the rise in a question, or you can raise your eyebrow to feel it.

mǎ, 3^rd tone, dipping tone, it is down and up, you can nod your head to feel it.

mà, 4^th tone, down tone, it is very short and firm, like you say “NO” in a very strong way.

And there is another tone, which is a neutral tone, or you can call it no-tone, ma, just make it very short and light when you pronounce it.

So strictly saying there are 5 tones in total, 4 tones + 1 neutral tone.

Please don’t be scared by the tones, as Chinese is a language which is very much based on word combinations and context, even your tones are not exactly right, people will still be able to understand you (I mean, most of the time and when they are ready for you to speak Chinese)!

Once, I took a student for a field trip to a restaurant, he ordered a drink in Chinese “yī bēi chéng zhī” (a glass of orange juice), his accent sounded perfect to me. While I was so proud of my student’s progress, the waitress came with the drink… It was a glass of beer!

Our ears are trained in a very different way to westerners. For westerners, the tones seem impossible to distinguish, while for Chinese, the tiny difference between the pronunciation, like the sound of “shut, shirt, shit” are almost impossible for us to tell. So our ears are focused on the pitch of the sound, but quite tolerant to the similarity of the pronunciation. So that’s why you may find out that there are 10 different ways for people saying “xie xie” (thanks), but we still can understand each other as long as the pitch is right.

So a suggestion for beginner learners, especially for those who just started. Try to get familiar with the sound is very important, you can play some Chinese CDs, listen to some Chinese songs, use the free material on our website, pay attention to what Chinese people say…of course you won’t understand everything, and you don’t need to understand everything, just warm up your ears to the Chinese sound. It would be very helpful for your further study.