{"id":10726,"date":"2015-01-22T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=10726"},"modified":"2015-01-24T04:33:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T08:33:04","slug":"you-speak-chinese-very-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/you-speak-chinese-very-well\/","title":{"rendered":"You Speak Chinese Very Well!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese is a difficult language to master, and nobody knows this more than the Chinese themselves. As such, people in China are often quite impressed to hear foreigners speaking their language, even at the most basic level. If I had a dollar for every time a Chinese person told me how great my Mandarin is, well I probably wouldn’t be sitting here in Kunming at the moment – I’d be relaxing on an island somewhere counting my money in very mediocre Chinese. Having grown up in the States – where let’s be honest, people aren’t exactly patient when it comes to communicating with non-English speakers – the constant praise and encouragement from locals pushed me to study harder and practice more. It’s hard to imagine an American telling a foreign tourist, “Wow! Your English is so great!” after they simply said “Hello.” Throw out a solid “\u4f60\u597d” in China, though, and you’re sure to get props for it. How do you know when someone is complimenting you, and what should you say in return? Here are some common ways that Chinese people will elevate your dismal Chinese language abilities:<\/p>\n

Common Compliments<\/h1>\n
\"Thanks,

Thanks, Chairman Mao!<\/p><\/div>\n

“You speak Chinese very well.”<\/h3>\n

\u4f60\u8bf4\u4e2d\u6587\u8bf4\u5f97\u5f88\u597d – n\u01d0 shu\u014d zh\u014dng w\u00e9n shu\u014d d\u00e9 h\u011bn h\u01ceo<\/h3>\n

“Your Chinese isn’t bad.”<\/h3>\n

\u4f60\u7684\u4e2d\u6587\u4e0d\u9519 – n\u01d0 de zh\u014dng w\u00e9n\u00a0b\u00fa\u00a0cu\u00f2<\/h3>\n

“You speak good Mandarin.”<\/h3>\n

\u4f60\u7684\u666e\u901a\u8bdd\u8bb2\u5f97\u5f88\u597d – n\u01d0 de p\u01d4 t\u014dng hu\u00e0 ji\u01ceng d\u00e9 h\u011bn h\u01ceo<\/h3>\n

“Your pronunciation is very standard.”<\/h3>\n

\u4f60\u7684\u53d1\u97f3\u5f88\u6807\u51c6\u7684 – n\u01d0 de f\u01ce y\u012bn h\u011bn bi\u0101o zh\u01d4n de<\/h3>\n

A Grammar Lesson<\/h1>\n
\"Don't

Don’t confuse these two.<\/p><\/div>\n

Let’s look back at those examples to point out a very important and useful grammatical structure. In these sentences, we see the particles\u00a0\u7684 and \u5f97 – both are pronounced as “de” in the neutral tone. For beginners, it’s easy to confuse these two characters. To help you better understand these two characters and how they are used, here’s a brief description:<\/p>\n

\u7684<\/h1>\n

This is actually the most common Chinese character<\/a> in use today, so it’s a good one to learn. This character functions just like ‘s<\/em> (apostrophe + s) in English in that it shows possession. The formula for using it is “Subject +\u00a0\u7684 + Object.” Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n