Virtual Mandarin

家庭 jiātíng

In the Summer School which I'm organising, we learned about family yesterday. I thought I'd have a go at describing my own family. As ever, feel free to correct!

我叫马克。
wǒ jiào Mark.

我妻子叫 Karen.
wǒ qīzi jiào Karen.

我们有两个儿子。他们叫 Michael 和 Oscar.
wǒ men yǒu liǎng ge érzi. Tā men jiào Michel hé Oscar.

Michael 四岁。Oscar 一岁。
Michael sì suì. Oscar yī suì.

我有一个弟弟。他叫 David. 他三十二岁。
wǒ yǒu yí ge dì di. Tā jiào David. Tā sān shí èr suì.

我有一个姐姐。她叫 Katy. 她三十八岁。
wǒ yǒu yí ge jiě jie. Tā jiào Katy. Tā sān shí bā suì.

我妈妈叫 Gayle.
wǒ mā ma jiào Gayle.

我爸爸叫 Steve.
wǒ bā ba jiào Steve.

Not quite sure which word to use for "wife" - qīzi 妻子 àirén 爱人 fūrén 夫人 tàitai 太太?

我今天很好 Wǒ jīn tiān hēn hāo

我今天很好 wǒ jīn tiān hěn hǎo ... but 我今天很累 wǒ jīn tiān hěn lèi! Back from holiday and although I got a chance to look at some Chinese I didn't quite manage to catch up with everything up to lesson 10 of ChinesePod! However, over the next few days I've got a few long drives and I started today with a 5 hour return journey to Inveraray (hence 我今天很累) during which I listened to episodes 4,5 and 6 back to back on repeat! A bit confusing - lots to cover, but I'm hopefully back on track a bit (hence 我今天很好！).

So, starting with episode 4, here are my notes and thoughts. Again, please feel free to comment if I'm getting anything wrong! Your comments and emails are very much appreciated.

Lesson 4 begins with introducing 今天 jīn tiān which appears to mean "today". Fairly straightforward. The position of 今天 in a sentence seems to be quite flexible, but in the conversation given it appears after the pronoun 你 nǐ: 你今天好吗？ nǐ jīn tiān hǎo ma? Presumably then to say "I'm very well today" I can say 我今天很好 wǒ jīn tiān hěn hǎo. And using the other vocabulary already covered, there are three statements I can make:

我今天很好 wǒ jīn tiān hěn hǎo "I'm very well today"
我今天很累 wǒ jīn tiān hěn lèi "I'm very tired today"
我今天很忙 wǒ jīn tiān hěn máng "I'm very busy today"

I think I'm also right in saying that in none of the above examples I should be using 是 shì because the 很 hěn has a verbal quality, as Matt explained.

The answer to the question 你今天好吗? nǐ jīn tiān hǎo ma? in the conversation is 很好谢谢。你呢？ hěn hǎo, xiè xie. Nǐ ne? "Very well, thanks. And you?" All makes sense so far, and it's these phrases I'm feeling very confident with now because I've heard them so often. Moving on, there's some new vocabulary introduced in the next section:

I like this one! 马马虎虎 mǎ mǎ hū hū apparently means literally "horse horse tiger tiger". No idea quite why that means "so-so", but there's no doubt a good explanation! Why is the speaker just 马马虎虎？Because 他今天很累 tā jīn tiān hěn lèi, "he is very tired today". Obviously in the first person he/she says 我今天很累, but I just thought I'd report the speech by using third person 他今天很累。

A couple of totally new phrases coming up, but I think that these will probably be coming in very useful.

真的吗 zhēn de ma means "really?", as if the speaker is confirming whatever the other speaker has said. I'm not sure about the literal translation of 真的吗, but it seems to be followed naturally by 为什么 wèi shén me, which means "why?"

The natural answer to a 为什么 question will begin with "because..." which is 因为 yīn wéi, in this conversation 因为我很忙 yīn wéi wǒ hěn máng, "because I'm very tired." I guess the speaker could also have said 因为我今天很忙 yīn wéi wǒ jīn tiān hěn máng, "because today I'm very tired". Obviously that would be overkill on the 今天 but I guess it works grammatically and I'm just trying to get used to using it!

OK, so that seems to be all the new language covered in the lesson. I'm going to try to construct a conversation based on everything I know so far. I'll be using some of the constructions I used in my previous conversation from lesson 3.

A: 你今天好吗？
B: 我今天很好，谢谢。你呢？
A: 我今天很累。
B: 真的吗？为什么？
A: 我今天很忙。
B: 你今天去哪里？
A: 我今天去学校。
B: 我也去学校。

A: Nǐ jīn tiān hǎo ma?
B: Wǒ jīn tiān hěn hǎo, xiè xie. Nǐ ne?
A: Wǒ jīn tiān hěn lèi.
B: Zhēn de ma? Wèi shén me?
A: Wǒ jīn tiān hěn máng.
B: Nǐ jīn tiān qù nǎ li?
A: Wǒ jīn tiān qù xué xiào.
B: Wǒ yě qù xué xiào.

A: How are you today?
B: I'm very well today, thanks. And you?
A: I'm tired today.
B: Really? Why?
A: I'm very busy today.
B: Where are you going today?
A: I'm going to the school today.
B: I'm also going to the school.

A few things I'm not 100% sure about there. First of all, I'm not sure about the position of the 今天 in the sentence 我今天去学校. I don't know if 今天 always comes after the pronoun, but it does seem to do so in sentences like 你今天好吗？ Maybe someone reading this could help here.

I'm also not sure about the 为 with its two pronunciations:
为什么 wèi shén me
因为 yīng wéi
Is this definitely correct? Does 为 have two pronunciations with different tones?

Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Need to work a bit more on the new 汉字 covered in this lesson and will add them to my flashcard collection in the next few days.

iPod image versions - Chinesepod 01-09

If anyone is interested, here are the links to the Chinesepod conversation transcription flashcards I've done for my iPod to keep my brain in gear while i'm on holiday! I'll hopefully come back in a week a bit more confident with the contents of lessons 1-9!

Lesson 01 zip
Lesson 02 zip
Lesson 03 zip
Lesson 04 zip
Lesson 05 zip
Lesson 06 zip
Lesson 07 zip
Lesson 08 zip
Lesson 09 zip

Instructions
Just download the zip file, unzip it and then copy the images into iPhoto or whatever app you use to manage images on your iPod. Then once you have transferred the images onto your iPod, play the lesson you want to listen to and while it's playing go into Photos > Slideshow Settings > Music > select "Now Playing". Make sure Time per slide is set to "Manual" and Shuffle Photos is set to "Off". Then navigate back to your album list, select your album, eg. Chinesepod-01, select the first image and then click the play button. You should now be able to toggle between the different slides as you listen to the text.

Hope this is useful to some of the other newbies out there - and if you do download the files, let me know what you think by posting a comment.

Latest flashcards

One of my methods for learning Chinese, particularly when it comes to writing, is by preparing my own materials to use on my palm or iPod when I get a minute. I've done a set of flashcards for some of what has been covered in lessons 1-3 of ChinesePod. I've included the character as it's written in different fonts, and given examples of it in sentences.

For each character, the first flashcard shows the character itself, the alternative font versions, and example sentences including the character:

The second flashcard shows the same as the first one, but includes the pinyin versions.

The third flashcard shows the English translation of both the character itself and of the sample sentences.


Download Flashcards01-17.zip Please do let me know if you download these and find them useful by posting a comment!

你去哪里？ Nǐ qù nǎ li?

Time to move on to lesson 3 of Chinesepod. I've actually listened ahead to a couple of the Chinesepod programmes, but until I catch up on the vocabulary and my own language work based on the programmes I don't feel I've quite mastered everything contained in each episode of Chinesepod. Tonight I'm going to be covering a couple of new things, including the verb 去 qù, and a few other bits and pieces. It's been a very busy week and because work is going to be really busy over the next three weeks, I'm not expecting to get an enormous amount done. But I do want to try to keep going with things!

Lesson 3 began by introducing the words 先生 xiān sheng, meaning "Mr" and 小姐 xiǎo jie, meaning "Miss". I suppose that makes me "Pentleton 先生", but there must be a more Chinese sounding name!

In fact, I've recently been sent an email from colleagues over at the Mandarin Gateway who have come up with a name for me. Lin suggested that it's easier to work with the first syllable of my second name (Pen) and identify a Chinese name based on that. Her suggestion has been 彭 peng. My understanding is that Chinese names normally follow the three character pattern. I suppose this could make my name 碰马克 peng ma kè. Lin also mentioned something about changing my first name, but I didn't fully understand so I'll get back to her and will post again another time about this. In the meantime, I can introduce myself as 彭先生 peng xiān sheng.

Another new and pretty useful phrase in this programme was 你呢 nì ne? It means, "and you?" and can be used to request the same information from someone else, eg. see the conversation below:

A: 你好吗？
B: 我很好。 你呢？
A: 我也很好。

A: Nǐ hǎo ma?
B: Wõ hěn hǎo. Nǐ ne?
A: Wǒ yě hěn hǎo.

A: How are you?
B: I'm fine. And you?
A: I'm also fine.

I managed to slip the word 也 yě in there. It means "also" or "too". Another example: 我也是美国人 wǒ yě shì měi guó rén: "I'm also American". Think it works this way anyway!

Next came the question 你去哪里 nǐ qù nǎ li? Word for word translation here gives 你 nǐ - you; 去 qù - go; 哪里 nǎ li - where.

The answer given in the third programme as an example is 我去学校wǒ qù xuéxiào, "I go to the school". The interesting thing here is that, if this is a typical structure, there's no preposition for "to the school". In the dictionary 学校 is given as "school", so the preposition must be in the verb. This is what I mean about things appearing very straightforward as I mentioned a couple of days ago.

So, trying to add to what I've already learned and use the new material in today's lesson, here is a made-up conversation based on what I've covered so far:

A: 你好吗？
B: 很好谢谢。你呢？
A: 我也很好。
B: 你是英国人？
A: 不是。我匙苏格兰人。
B: 我也是苏格兰人。你去哪里？
A: 我去学校。
B: 我也去学校。

A: Nǐ hǎo ma?
B: Hěn hǎo, xiè xie. Nǐ ne?
A: Wǒ yě hěn hǎo.
B: Nǐ shì yīng guó rén.
A: Bú shì. Wǒ shì sūgélán rén.
B: Wǒ yě shì sūgélán én. Nǐ qù nǎ li?
A: Wǒ qù xué xiào.
B: Wǒ yě qù xué xiào.

A: How are you?
B: Very well, thanks. And you?
A: I'm very well too.
B: Are you English?
A: No, I'm Scottish.
B: I'm also Scottish. Where are you going?
A: I'm going to the school.
B: I'm also going to the school.

我是很忙 Wǒ shì hěn máng!** (see below)

That's the reason I've not been posting much over the past few days! My first Mandarin excuse! 我匙很忙 wǒ shì hěn máng means "I am very busy". I've learned this in the second lesson of Chinesepod, and this is what I'm going to concentrate on today. I've listened to the episode a few times - I'm finding that because there's no reference point it's really difficult to remember the words. Most of the other languages I've learned have in some way been interrelated and I can always link a word in Catalan to the Spanish equivalent or in German to the Norwegian word I know. I found the same last year when I began Japanese - you just need to know that the word means whatever it means and learn it.

The episode began with some practice of nationalities from the first lesson. The revision of nationalities and countries included the following words:

美国 - měi guó - America
英国 - yīng guó - England
法国 - fǎ guó - France
德国 - dé guó - Germany
中国 - zhōng guó - China

It appears then that the word 国 (guó) on its own means "country". There are apparently lots of countries which are formed with 国, though apparently not Scotland which is 苏格兰 (sūgélán).

In Japanese I remember being quite pleased to discover that to form a nationality all you need to do is add the particle 人 (jin) to the end of a country, for example 中国人 (chūgoku-jin), or スコットランド人 (skotturando-jin). In Chinese it's the same! And the Japanese kanji for jin - 人 - is none other than the Chinese character for rén 人！So this gives the following vocabulary:

美国人 - měi guó rén - American person
英国人 - yīng guó rén - English person
法国人 - fǎ guó rén - French person
德国人 - dé guó rén - German person
中国人 - zhōng guó rén - Chinese person
and...
苏格兰人 - sūgélán rén - Scottish person

This sentence, 他是美国人吗 (tā shì měi guó rén ma) is asking "Is he American?" Certainly in terms of pronunciation, tā shì měi guó rén ma could also mean "is SHE American", or indeed "is IT American". However, in this case the character tā would be written with a different character: 他 tā - "he"; 她 - tā - "she"; and 它 tā - "it".

The answer to the above question, given in the conversation on Chinesepod was 不是，他是英国人 (bú shì, tā shì yīng guó rén). From the previous lesson I guess that 不 (bú) is the negative particle when combined with a verb like 是（shì), but I did also read that 不 can mean a straightforward "no". I think I'll come back to 不 in another post because, having looked it up in the dictionary, I've discovered that there's something quite interesting about it tone-wise.

The new vocabulary introduced in lesson 2 included the word 忙 (máng). The question 他很忙吗 (tā hěn máng ma?) means "Is he busy?" Equally, given what I know already, I think you could ask the question: 你很忙吗？ (nǐ hěn máng ma?) "are you very busy?", or make the statement 我很忙 (wǒ hěn máng), "I'm very busy".

If 忙 (máng) means "busy", then another useful word which can be interchanged in sentences is "tired". This word is 累 (lèi). So, you could also ask the question 你很类吗？(nǐ hěn lèi ma?) "are you very tired?" or make the statement 我很类 (wǒ hěn lèi) "I'm very tired".

The final word included in today's lesson was 对 (duì), meaning "yes". So, in answer to the question 你很忙吗？ (nǐ hěn máng ma?) you could say 对我很忙 (duì, wǒ hěn máng). I'm not 100% sure about the whole 不 thing - perhaps you could equally answer: 不，我不很忙 (bú, wǒ bú hěn máng), meaning "No, I'm not very busy". Really not too sure about the 不 and where it goes or indeed how exactly it's used.

Onto some conversations based on this new language, and indeed on the previous stuff I've done.

Conversation

A: 你好吗？
B: 我很好，谢谢。你好吗？你忙吗？
A: 对。我很忙。我很类。

A: nǐ hǎo ma?
B: wǒ hěn hǎo, xiè xie. nǐ hǎo ma? nǐ máng ma?
A: duì. wǒ hěn mang. wǒ hěn lèi.

A: How are you?
B: I'm fine, thanks. How are you? Are you busy?
A: Yes. I'm very busy. I'm very tired.

Bit of a depressing conversation, but hey! I'm practising. I'm going to be doing some recording for work tomorrow, so if I get some spare time, I'll try putting together a quick recording of this stuff to see if someone out there is willing to correct my pronunciation!

That's all for now, so 明天见 (míng tiān jiàn) - until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are the iPod-ready flashcards if you're interested: Download Archive.zip (236k)

Update
Many thanks to Matt who has pointed out that I shouldn't have written 我是很忙, rather 我很忙 at the beginning - and indeed in the title of this post. As he kindly explains in the comments, 很 acts as a connector in this sentence and the verb 是 isn't required. 谢谢，Matt!

我就喜欢 I'm lovin' it...

I never expected to be learning Mandarin from a McDonald's paper bag. [I had a salad, promise!] OK, so it is hardly a major academic achievement, but I have to admit to being fair excited when I realised I recognised the 我 wǒ character on the multilingual "I'm lovin' it" logo of McDonald's! Having done a bit of investigation the other characters include 喜欢 xǐhuan, one of the words used for "love" when talking about things or activities. I wonder what the 2nd character is...

Update
On a mission to "unlock the code" that is recognising Chinese characters I started off by looking at the Wikipedia list of Chinese radicals to see if I could identify the characters which made up the missing character. This proved too difficult - I don't really understand the radicals enough yet. So, Googled "我 喜欢 McDonalds" (wǒ xǐhuan) and found a few references where I recognised the 2nd characted. I then headed over to Chinese-tools.com to the Chinese text to pinyin convertor and entered the four characters, 我就喜欢, and all was explained: the missing link was the character 就, in pinyin jiù. As a follow up, I tried I couple of online translators* and the combination of 我就喜欢 wǒ jiù xǐhuan seems to give "I like", which I guess fits in with the McDonald's theme!

If any native Mandarin speakers want to give a better translation of 我就喜欢, please feel free to post a comment! And I was going to say no to the McDonald's lunch to be more healthy! Still glad I had the salad... ;)

Here's the full logo, now that I know the four characters:

*I would stress that I'm NOT suggesting that the use of online translators is an effective method of getting an accurate translation, but they can help sometimes in confirming meanings as long as they're used carefully!

Two more greetings

I had a really busy day today so I've not had much of a chance to get into my Chinese. However, rather than do nothing at all, I've picked up from a newly discovered website a few more greetings.

I've already covered 你好 nǐ hǎo, meaning "hello", so it's only right that I add in the phrase for "goodbye". This is 再见 zàijiàn.

There's also the phrase "see you tomorrow". This is 明天见, pronounced míngtiān jiàn.

I'm afraid that will have to do it for tonight. In the meantime, 明天见！

One more thing...

Ros kindly pointed out in response to an earlier post that the word for Scotland is 苏格兰 sū gé lán. I guess this means that Scottish (person) is 苏格兰人 sū gé lán rén. In which case the phrase I was trying to find earlier in response to Graham's discussion is:

不是英国人，我是苏格兰人！
bú shì ying guó rén. wǒ shì sū gé lán rén.

(I'm not English, I'm Scottish).

Now I'm counting on the support of everyone for this adventure, so I'd better stop there!

我是美国人 :: wǒ shì měi guó rén

I've not really had much of a chance today to do more Mandarin - it's been a busy day. I did, however, listen to the rest of Chinesepod lesson 1, and I've managed to add a few more phrases and words to my vocabulary.

The first thing I came across today was the word shì. It's pretty difficult to say, or at least to imitate the pronunciation of the presenters on Chinesepod. It actually sounds a bit like a New York accent in a way! Shì appears to be part of the verb "to be", and, like Japanese, it seems to stay the same, regardless of who is "being". Some of the personal pronouns were also covered in the vocabulary for this edition of Chinesepod. I'm sure there are more, and there are undoubtedly different levels of politeness with the "you" form, but no doubt I'll come across these in good time.

我是 :: wǒ shì :: I am
睨是 :: nǐ shì :: you are
他是 :: tā shì :: he is
她是 :: tā shì :: she is
它是 :: tā shì :: it is

Interestingly the same word, tā seems to be used for he / she / it, but there are three separate characters: 他，她 and 它. (I keep wanting to say "kanji" for the characters, but I know they're not kanji!)

This phrase, 你是中国人 nǐ shì zhōng guó rén, means "you are Chinese". To make it into a question you need to add on the 吗 (ma) particle, giving nǐ shì zhōng guó rén ma?

The negative particle (?) seems to be bú. This may also mean "no", but I'm not 100% sure. I think it makes the verb which follows negative, so while the sense of bú shì is "no", it actually means "am not".

This is "I am", wǒ shì To say "I am Chinese" would therefore be 我是中国人， wǒ shì zhōng guó rén. To say "I'm not Chinese" I think you'd say 不是中国人, bú shì zhōng guó rén.

If 中国人 zhōng guó rén is "Chinese person" then 美国人 měi guó rén is "American person". By extension, I think that China is 中国 zhōng guó, and America is 美国 měi guó. The 人 rén is the "person" part. I'm sure I'll be able to add some more vocabulary quickly when I get a few more countries.

Putting it all together, you get 不是，我㖷美国人 bú shì, wǒ shì měi guó rén, meaning "I am not (or simply "no"), I am American.

Download 060427_Archive.zip to access the iPod-ready flashcards covering the phrases and words in what I've learned today.

Just as a wee practice of what I've covered so far:

A :: 你好 nĩ hão
B :: 你好吗？ nǐ hǎo ma?
A :: 很好。 你好吗？Hěn hǎo. Nǐ hǎo ma?
B :: 很好。你是中国人吗？Hěn hǎo. Nǐ shì zhōng guó rén?
A :: 不是。我是美国人。 Bú shì. Wǒ shì měi guó rén.

Translation

A :: Hello
B :: How are you?
A :: I'm well. How are you?
B :: Very well. Are you Chinese?
A :: No (I'm not). I'm American.

And that will do for tonight!