20 ESSENTIAL Chinese Phrases for Beginners Part 2

hey everyone and welcome to another 20 essential beginner chinese phrases that you must know my name is ben hedges i have a degree in modern and classical chinese i lived in asia for 10 years and i've made my career teaching chinese and i can teach you how to sound like a boss in chinese if you like the sound that why not subscribe for new videos every week last week we did a part 1 of this video and some people complained that we taught the phrase nihaoma and basically they're saying that people don't say that very much anymore as a greeting okay nihamat meaning how are you people are more likely to say as a way of saying how are you that is true but i think the reason that the textbooks still teach nihalma even though it's kind of outdated it's because it is a kind of simple way of teaching the ma type question basically if you add the word ma to anything it becomes a question so if you say ni you good all right hello in chinese the most basic way of saying it and then you add a ma it makes you're good right niha ma how are you so that's why a lot of textbooks still teach it in my opinion but critics of that are right that people in china and taiwan they don't really say nihamar as a greeting that much anymore but anyway it is a good way of understanding the maa type question but let's now get into 20 more beginner chinese phrases and our first one is thai something le okay this is way of expressing things that are excessive okay so if you wanted to say too hot like the weather outside is too hot you could say tyrollah okay same as if you were drinking a hot drink if it was cold if it was winter you could say tai long la all right and you could say that with a cold drink too or a cold ice cream oh i don't want to eat this right if something in a market was too expensive you could say tae kweila or if something you know just looked uh kind of cheap in its design you could say uh kind should i type it looks too cheap and you could basically add in any adjective in this i might do a video of useful thai something phrases but i'll just reel off a few tychula too old uh thai liam uh too bright like bright sunlight thaihaula that's too good okay it's really good that's a positive way of using it thai bangla is another way bang is kind of a similar meaning to good like too great it's too amazing thai bangla so you can have fun with that just picking adjectives and adding them in between the word tight and the word okay time means to and le is kind of like in this case sort of just more of an emphasis next how to ask if someone is all right let's say you see someone on the street stub their toe or fall over have a minor mishap you can say to someone or your friend has a minor mishap spilled a drink on someone something or they like hold their stomach like oh you could say hi hama which means are you still okay okay me is you hi is still okay and ha obviously means good and then ma makes it into a question are you okay and then the way they'd respond to this um which is our sec our next phrase uh you could just say haiha you know no problem you could repeat it a few times another way of saying literally no problem is meiwenti like if someone asks if you have a problem um or someone could ask you hi hama you could say oh haiha me wenti follow it up with that all right another way of saying that there's nothing wrong similar to me wenti and if you're a northeastern uh if you want to learn a northeastern dialect you can add an er to it may sure okay but just don't go make sure and sound like a pirate okay because everyone's just gonna think you're stupid right like if you learned english and you intentionally learned a cockney accent and you're always emphasizing people would just be thinking like this guy's an idiot um but yeah normally it's best to just learn the kind of standard accent so may shoot may shoot um but yeah if you if you are like in the northeast of china and you want to kind of blend in you can make sure i'm sure so nothing's wrong okay wendy maysha these are okay that's our next phrase dokkae which means all okay and you could say any of these basically to say that you are fine and dolce can be used in this way if someone gives you two choices and you don't really mind uh like if someone says oh okay you want to go to chinatown eat delicious chinese dim sum or do you want to go to mcdonald's and you don't really mind for some reason all right i would choose the dim sum but this person doesn't really mind you could say all okay no problem don't know why you would say that but hey go for the dim sum all right now if you want to ask someone a question and uh you know you could say this someone you know but this is particularly useful if you're kind of cold approach to someone that you don't know especially on the street and you want to ask a question or at an event or something like that um but you say ching wen okay ching is kind of you can use it you can translate it as please you could also translate it as may i and then when is to ask okay like we've seen when t means question so when it means to ask so it's kind of like may i ask so let's say you want to approach someone on the street and you're asking for directions you could say oh uh ching wen and then you could go with your question yin hang zainali where is the bank okay so ching wen is a very useful phrase if you want to just go up and ask someone a question uh it's kind of a polite way of saying hey i want to ask a question let's say asking someone on the street where is the bank or something like that a useful way of asking where something is is saying so if you were asking where the bank is you could say yin han zem za you literally put the place you want to go at the beginning and then you say damn and i want to give you a difference between zemedzal and another phrase so zemedzal literally means how to get there okay should i walk straight down the street and then i turn left and then i take the next right something like that okay so basically if you say it's amazon you can assume that person is going to give you directions like physical directions okay but if you say okay that means how should i go there and if you say it's that much huh it's really like should i take a taxi should i take the subway should i walk and you could expect the person is gonna tell you the most convenient way to get there so they could say oh uh right if you say it's a machi so that means taking the subway would be the most convenient way to get to that bank that you want to go to now another phrase uh that is going to be useful for talking to people that you've only just met whether that's out on the street or um at a party or something is asking them what they're called okay literally this means how address you how should i address you and nin by the way is the more polite way of saying ni okay so it's that's a polite way so let's say someone did just say oh you did just ask them how to get to the bank and they told you oh you know taking the subway or whatever at the end you might want to just politely be like oh it's a macho nin and the guy says oh i'm zhang and you say oh well let's say you're at a party and you really do want to get to know someone and know their full name you could say and they probably will tell you uh what their name is or they might even give you a business card right the next useful phrase um is to ask if someone likes something or the word to like which is and if you've ever seen the mcdonald's commercial in china or taiwan that's how they translate i'm loving it all right so you can see technically it's i'm liking it or i really like i like it right but um is the word you use to say that you like something okay so you could say oh nisi huang jong koa tayama do you like chinese food um you can also use the choice type question instead of the ma question so instead of saying nisi huan bushi huan we say nishi wushi huan jungworth okay you don't need the ma because you're already giving a question because it's the choice type question but with these two word verbs you don't repeat the entire verb twice you just take the first character so instead of shihwan bushihuan it would be shibu and that's going to go for a lot of different chinese verbs that are two character when you do the choice type question you uh just take the first the first character and this leads us in well to another word that sounds similar to sijuan but actually means something different and that is okay and i got confused a lot about this my first year in taiwan but because people come up to me and they say nishiguan taiwan and i would think they're saying nisiohan taiwan and i would be like oh yeah and they'll be like and it actually means to be used to something okay have you become accustomed to it are you used to it so after living there for a couple of months they wanted to know if i'd adapted to it and got used to living there so they were saying is and you could also use the same choice type question or anything right like if someone's come to the u.s you could say to a chinese person nisiguan meguma like are you used to living here in the u.s next if someone's not really used to it they might say oh well busy guangzhenshi okay i'm not used to the weather here and uh the person might reply oh sing cooler all right and that's our next phrase shinkula means uh basically um wow you're working hard hang in there you you know you're having a tough time right soon cool it's simple so you'll often hear people say that and you could say it to other people when you see someone you know working really hard they've worked they've just worked a 12-hour shift or something you could be like wow sing cooler and you know if someone worked a 12-hour shift they must be okay so lee hi is our next phrase and it means formidable and we do have a hot words episode on this i'll put this on the end screen of this video you can check it out if you want to understand it more deeply but you're going to hear that a lot like if you go to taiwan maybe if you go to china i'm not sure but in taiwan they said a lot if you taiwan to learn chinese and someone sees you studying or they see they hear you speaking chinese or something like that they might say right it means very formidable literally but it basically means you're awesome all right it's a compliment they're giving you a compliment basically you might not really be awesome okay don't get too uh right but um yeah it's someone giving you a compliment and uh you know if you have been studying chinese or you've been working hard at whatever another thing people might say to you is which means add oil literally add oil um but it's another way of saying oh you know go for it like keep going you're doing well all right we've got another hot words episode on it i'll put it on the end screen of this video thumbnail looks like this where we fully explain it but basically yeah it's a way it's a mode of encouragement you might hear it at sporting events people going or you might hear it um at a political event right someone says that yeah you know the crowd says jiayo to their favorite political candidate i mean you hear that in taiwan certainly probably won't hear that in china but um moving on all right to finish off we have some food vocabulary okay so let's say you're going to a restaurant or you want to go to a restaurant it's getting towards dinner time you might say if you're hungry you might say okay which means i'm hungry uh and the word uh for hungry uh just imagine you've been punched in the stomach and you might make a sort of noise like that like okay for newbies that's kind of a way of remembering it but the e sound in the fourth tone in uh pinyin is uh okay it's not e or ela okay it's um and you've got the lure there as well indicating a change of state you weren't hungry before but now you're hungry okay and if you're thirsty same thing you could say okay or cooler that means i am thirsty and because you're hungry and thirsty you go to the restaurant and let's just say you eat a big plate of whatever and you drink some nice drinks but you're still not done and you want more a really easy way of saying um you know that you want some more is okay i want one more again one more or taipei if you've been drinking something and you want more tea or more of a nice cold drink so ebay that's a really nice way easy way to say i want one more obviously you might want to soften it um with you know some nice words like like could i is it possible to get one more that's here you know soften it like that don't just be like but you know it's a chinese a bit more direct than english anyway so you go you know like that with a smile um that's kind of a good way of asking for more you can just point at the thing that you want right if you don't know the chinese name of the dish you ordered you said all right now you've finished eating and you are full you can say watch okay and that means i have eaten my fill and we have the le particle which indicates a change of state um and this can also be a question as well someone might ask you chavalama and you would probably say shibala if you were full and made shiba if you were not full and people in taiwan often use this as sort of a greeting okay an alternative to nihama especially if you go to someone's house they might say honey um because they're kind of implying that if you're not full they might make you some food all right and so you can just politely reply or chobala chabala all right so with woman shibala we're leaving the restaurant we're going home and to say goodnight we are going to say an which just means night peaceful okay same as zawan means morning peace means night peace and it's a nice way to say good night or say goodbye in the evening um you know you could use it to be like literally good night you're going to bed or like oh it's the evening and we're parting ways when and bye bye all right guys that is the video for today please subscribe if you are new please leave your comments suggestions uh example sentences below or anything you think i've made a mistake in uh do leave that below as well uh we will see you next week in the next video bye