Lesson #4 - Basic Chinese Greetings
June 8th, 2007Learn Chinese travel phrases with SurvivalPhrases.com! A little Chinese can go such a long way! Whether you’re traveling, visiting, or sightseeing, survivalphrases.com has all the essential travel phrases just for you!Today we cover another high frequency Chinese phrase sure to be of use on your trip, travels or vacation to China.
Today we cover basic greetings in Chinese. Be sure to stop by SurvivalPhrases.com before you set out on your trip to China, and be sure to stop by SurvivalPhrases.com and leave us a post!
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老师好 （Hey, there’s a greeting you didn’t cover in the lesson!)
I’m with you on the good-morning/good afternoon/ good evening thing. While these phrases are in Chinese, they are hardly ever used, and the standard 你好 can be used at all times of day.
The only times you’d hear 晚上好 （good evening) 早安 (good morning) or 下午好 (good afternoon) would be from a concierge, or at a posh restauraunt or something. If a friend said one of these phrases to me, I’d probably ask him to lighten up.
Great Lesson 老师好!
You have a very plesant voice too! I like the way you do this Chinese survival phrases.
I have Chinese friends here on NYC and I’m impressing them with this phrases and they like it!
S_R_C
Yeah, maxie, no one ever does use those. Though sometimes people in my apartment complex say 早上好 or just 早啊 to me. Usually it’s the people who sell me breakfast.
Glad to hear your friends like the phrases, Sindy.
And I guess somebody should say it: the greeting that Maxie used is 老师好 (lao3 shi1 hao3). It would mean “Hello, teacher.”
Where did you hear that greeting, Maxie?
I hear it hundreds of time a day! I teach at a public school in 上海 (shanghai) and whenever a student walks past a teacher, he or she salutes, and says 老师好。They’re meant to at least; the naughty ones never do.
I guess it’s a more formal greeting: You put the person’s position first (老师 is teacher) then 好 after it.
That’s funny. My old students never used to say that to me. They did sometimes say “老师，你好。” but mostly they just said the normal “你好。” I also mostly taught at university. I wonder if being more formal with them would have gotten them to respect me more…
I’ve just returned from China and you are absolutely right, a little Chinese can go a long way. I downloaded several of your basic lessons onto my iPod and practiced saying Good Morning, hello, thank you… people were so appreciative that I made the effort to learn a little of the language. And they said my pronunciation was good - thanks to Survival Phrases.
Hello,
I’ve been searching for a way to say “good” or “well” and haven’t found it yet.
For instance if someone wants to say “This tastes good” or “I’m well, thank you”
How would they say that?
Thanks!
Hi Maureen,
好hǎo is the word you’re looking for. “这个好吃” means “this tastes good” (not a literal translation) and 我还好 (i’m still ok) is the best translation I can think of for “I’m well, thank you”.
Hello,
Thanks for your response! My computer won’t allow pop-ups, so I can’t see the characters.
If you could give me the response for “How are you?” in Pinyin, then I could see it. Thanks!
Also, I have managed to download lessons 1-15 on my ipod, and it’s very helpful for practice in the car, etc. I wonder if it’s possible for me to download some of the further lessons onto the ipod. If you could tell me how to do that I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks again,
Maureen
The response for “how are you?” can be just nǐ hǎo again.
If you go to the premium feed (just click on “premium feed” on the top right of this page) you’ll be able to download the rest of the lessons onto your iPod.
Hi Guys,
Thank you for your nice lessons. Were the first 3 lessons ever published as premium PDF downloads? I certainly cant find them on the site.
Regards, Keith.
Very good material, thanks