Transportation-Short Phrases

Welcome to Speak Chinese Now, I'm Ms. Li. Today, we're going to work on our short phrases for transportation. In Chinese, transportation, you can say 交通 jiāotōng 交 jiāotōng is kind of intersect, 通 tōng is through. And think about those roads, they intersect and get you through, right? 交 tōng Now, take a look at 交 jiāotōng. It has things across. This part, the particle right here, or the radical or the index, it is to walk or movement. So 交通 jiāotōng definitely has movement. Otherwise, it's not called 交通 jiāotōng, right? Okay, let's get started. The first one, here's English on the left-hand side, and then Pinyin, then we have Chinese. I'm going to try my eyeglasses so I can see better. Right, the first one, to airport. English, you have a lot of the, to the airport. The Chinese don't have articles, so it's hard. Even, you know, I have been learning English for 30 years, there are times I know that there should be a the there, but I can't get it. And sometimes you have to have a or a. Sometimes you have to conjugate. It still bothers me. But guess what? Please work with my Chinese. Ignore my English. I'm learning English as well. So, to the airport. Let's say Pinyin 去 qù, it's to. 机场 jīchǎng, it's airport. Chinese here, I circle the 去 qù as our verb. 去 is to go, right? 去 is going that direction, going that direction. Leaving home, so it's 去. 机场 jīchǎng, jī is short for 飞机, flying machine. 场 is a field, open field. So if you want to say 运动场, it's a sports field that they're outside. 体育场, for sports, right? So you just, every time you see a 场, it's big, open space. And the other one is 工厂 gōngcháng. 工厂 is for work, like a workplace, right? So let's go ahead and say it together. To the airport. 去机场 qù jīchǎng. One of my librarians told me that, you know, she doesn't know any Chinese. She said, how come the Chinese don't have a space right here? We don't have a space after 去. She said in English, you got, you know, to the airport, Chinese even say 去, as opposed to we have a space, and then 机场. But we don't write that way. So you have to train your eyes and your mind to just say, 去机场, there is a space, and 去 is to go. 机场 is airport, right? For the, you know, beginners or the people just ran into Chinese, and it is definitely something we need to talk about it. The second one is to the train station. Again, we use 去, to go, heading that way. 去火车站 qù huǒ chē zhàn. 火车 is a train. Some of you guys know 火 is fire. 车 is vehicle. It's not a fire engine. It's not. They think about the train, and when it goes really fast, there's a spark, right? So that fire, the spark created 火车, right? Think about that. 站 is a station, any kind of station. You can say 车站, right? 车站 is, can be any kind of a vehicle station. 车站,火车站, or you can say 出租车站, right? Taxi station, right? 站, right here. It is your station. Again, we say 场, it's open field. It's a field and big space, right? So let's do this one more time. Train station, to train station. 去火车站,去火车站. Mentally, you have the separating 去 that has a space, a 去, not 火车站, and it stays together, right? Mentally, you kind of train yourself, have to group all the characters together. We don't have a space in between. To the hotel. Again, we use 去, as you see. Hotel, 酒店, 酒 is alcohol. 店, it can be a shop or store. So 酒店, it's referring to a hotel has bar to serve alcohol, right? 酒店 normally referring to higher-end hotels, or you can say 饭店. 饭店 can be, you know, mid-level sort of a hotel. It can also be a restaurant. So it depends on the context, right? 酒店 definitely says it's a hotel, whereas a bar, if you think about a high-end hotel, it has a bar, it has a lobby, it has music, and all of that, right? 去酒店, to the hotel. Again, 去, it's right here. As you see, all three has a 去, 去, 去, right? Just say 去, 去, 去. Can you say 去? 去 is hard to say. It's not true. It's 去, right? Chinese Q is a 去 sound, right? It almost sounds like cheese, ch, ch, right? Then the 于 is not a w sound. Anything after 几 looks like a J. Then 七 looks like a Q. 几, 七, 七, 七 is a cross. Anything after 几, 七, 七, 大屋 actually has to pronounce as a 于 sound. So 去, it's not true. It's a 去, 去. Let's say 去酒店, right? You got that? Okay, we're going to ask for where is something, right? The structure here, asking where is something is a place. You got to, you know, put your place there. Then you add 在哪里, 在哪里, 在 is at, 哪里 is where, at where. So let's see, where's the bathroom? Bathroom, you can say 洗手间, 洗手间 where you wash your hands, lavatory, right? You can say 洗手间在哪里? Or you can say, where's the airport? How do you say that? 机场在哪里? That's how you say it. If you ask, you want to ask people where is the train station, how do you say it? 火车站在哪里? There you go. What about hotel? You can say 酒店在哪里, right? So just remember, if you want to ask anything about related to where is something, you really have to say what, then a place first before you add 在哪里. That's your structure, right? And there's no other way. I don't think there's other way to say something 在哪里. So this southerner like to say 在哪里, at where. But where I came from, from Beijing, we like to have an er sound, so we drop 里. We say 在哪儿? Let's say 机场在哪儿? 火车站在哪儿? 酒店在哪儿? I lived in the States for so long, now I start to talk like a southerner. 在哪里? 机场在哪里? Whichever one works for you. If you like the er sound, you just say 在哪儿. If you don't like it, you just say 在哪里. 在哪里 sounds very Taiwanese. All right, we're going to move forward. I want to buy a ticket. 我 is I. want to 要 buy 买 Ticket is 票 So 我要买票 I want to buy a ticket. In Chinese, there are only four characters. In English, 一二三四五六, six, right? Six words say the same thing. I think in Chinese, it's a bit of a concise and doesn't have extra things that you have to add. You just say 我要买票 I want to buy ticket. That's it. And there's no buy a ticket. Only if you just say I want to buy two tickets, you say 我要买两张票 Right? Otherwise, you just say 我要买票 They say together 我要买票 我要买票 How do you say train ticket? So 票 is ticket, right? How do you say train ticket? 火车票 That's how you say it. I think Chinese is so cool because the vocab you learn, you can kind of it's like a Lego system. The more you know, and the pieces, you can kind of just move them, plug them. And so that's how the Chinese works. You don't have to conjugate. I love that about Chinese. It is simple, really. I think other languages I have noticed in English, I spend so much time trying to conjugate. I still don't know how to do it. Although I have a master's degree in Chinese language teaching, and I have lived in the States for 30 years. There are times in my head I know what to do. But when I started saying it, it's not right. But please forgive me. All right, let's go ahead and say 我要买票 How do you say I'd like to buy an airline ticket? Airline ticket is 飞机 No, airlines, 飞机 So you add a 票, 飞机票 You just say 我要买飞机票 Right? Now, you know, with a few sentence structures here, you can say a whole bunch of things. It's just incredible. In Chinese, once you learn a few basics, the structures there, you just kind of plug in and making more sentences. All right, here's another one. How much? 多少钱? I think the pinyin is not right. The pinyin is 多少钱 When I say it, I have to dip it. 多少钱? 多 by itself means a lot. 少 a little So a lot, a little, 多少 Direct translation would be how many or how much in Chinese. We don't have a how many. We don't have a how much. 多少? You just remember, it means how many, how much. So it's easy. You can use for the time you want to say how many. You can also use at the time you want to say how much. So 多少? 钱 is currency or money. 多少钱? Let's say it together. 多少钱? Get that in your head. So when you buy things in Chinatown or in China or in Taiwan or in Singapore, anywhere that you run into, let's say, small vendors, they don't speak English. You just say 多少钱? You point to the item. You kind of, you know, take the item and you say 多少钱? People do understand what you're saying. I think it's so cool, right? That reminded me of my journey learning French. I remember listening to an audio tape when I was driving to work. So there's one phrase really stuck with me. It's, I will buy it. It's, Roulepon, right? Roulepon. When I was in Paris, I was on Champs-Élysées, right? There are a lot of shops. I saw a beautiful scarf, silk scarf. I really liked it. So I look at it. I look at it. So they were talking to me in French. I don't quite understand much. But I made a decision. I want to buy it. I just, you know, grabbed it. I said, Roulepon. They got it. So they took me to register. I paid for it. I got my scarf. Not cool. So what you need to do is memorize all these, you know, short phrases. Use them in the, you know, at the right time. People do understand you. So that's communication, right? And so very last one. Too expensive. It's a structure. If you want to say, boy, it's too, let's say, too expensive or too tired, too thirsty, too full. You use a structure. So it's expensive. In China, when I was there, I remembered going to Xiu Shui market. Xiu Shui market is next to American embassy. There are a lot of merchandise, lots of vendors. Some of them are kind of fake products, like imitation of a product or things like that, right? If they ask a lot of money, you say, oh, too expensive. I know people that Americans have lived in China long enough. They know how to bargain. They're so good at bargaining. For instance, if the vendor names something, let's say this t-shirt says Prada or Versace, right, or Chanel on it. And the asking price, let's say 40 RMB, which is not much. It's divided by seven. It's not much. As far as divided by seven, that's U.S. dollar. One U.S. dollar has seven, over seven Chinese currency. So it's not much at all, a few dollars. But Americans, they lived there long enough. They know how to bargain. They cut in half, sometimes cut 60% off. It hurts me to see it because the vendors don't make much, right? And a few dollars to Americans, it's not much either. So when I was there, I bought a whole bunch of like a Prada, Versace, and Chanel. But their imitation t-shirts, they looked really good, right? It divided by seven. Let's see how much. It's not much at all, right? About six U.S. dollars. I just did a quick math in my head. All right, let's go ahead and say this all together. All right, to the airport. To the train station. To the hotel. Where is it? Where is the bathroom? Where is the train station? Where is the airport? Remember the structure. I want to buy a ticket. How much is it? Boy, it's too expensive. If you're so tired, you can say, is tired, right? If the weather is really hot, you say, If it's cold, you can say, So work on that structure, right? I have many videos, about 50 at this moment. Please subscribe and click like if you learned something. And forward to your friends who are learning Chinese and help to grow my channel. Appreciate it very much. So that's all I have for today. 谢谢 下次见