I’m just a passerby/student (haha) from KClass101 and I happened to see your question… As you’ve already know, “xie xie” means thanks, yes, you can treat it as just a plain “thanks” in English, that is.

“Xie4 xie4 ni3″ 谢谢你 can be directly translated into “Thank you” This is just one of the many forms of “xie xie”. You can say this if you want to thank a person in particular but please note that you can only say this in front of the person you want to thank, just like for English.

“Xie4 xie4 nin2″ 谢谢您 is the polite form of the above. With the “Ni” 你 character changed into a polite form. This form is used when talking to people of a respectable level.

“Xie4 xie4 ni3 men2″ 谢谢你们 can be translated into “Thanks to all of you” This form is rather of a standard politeness. You can say this phrase to thank a group of people.

And of course, if you dive deeper into the world of Chinese Language, there will be a lot of other “Thank You” formal/informal phrases.

Thank you and I hope my answer’s of help to you!

Just my 1c worth ^^;; ,
장용

P.S. Cindy, it’s “大家好!” (da4 jia1 hao3) which literally means “Everyone Good”. It’s translated into “Good day, everyone!” or “Are you doing fine?” etc. It’s a common greeting of a standard politeness level. It is used when you are greeting a group of people.

Lesson 14:
http://survivalphrases.com/chinese/2007/07/02/restaurant-3-getting-the-bill/

Lesson 15:
http://survivalphrases.com/chinese/2007/07/04/restaurant-4-paying-in-plastic/

Lesson 16:
http://survivalphrases.com/chinese/2007/07/06/counting-1-10/

Not sure if this is going to be censored out but: you have a very attractive voice.

Thank you.

不谢！

xie xie

Rest assured that we will always do our best to support you and answer your questions!

－罗子杰

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.

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”.

xie4 xie4!

And by the way, it’s méi shì.

It’s a strange mystery of the internet that sometimes this happens. And for some reason files never get cut off when someone’s in the middle of a sentence, only after a jingle finishes!

Thanks for pointing out the problem. It should now be fixed.

The pdf for this lesson (number 22) hasn’t changed but the pdf for lesson 21 now has the right material.

谢谢，

Max
罗子杰

Thanks for pointing this out. The problem should be fixed.

谢谢，

Max
罗子杰

At the moment, SurvivalPhrases.com doesn’t have any plans for further Standard Chinese lessons, but stay tuned for advanced Chinese lessons, Survival Phrases lessons in other Chinese dialects, and in other languages!

谢谢大家支持！
Thanks for your support!

Kevin - We’ll keep that in mind. But please remember that all of the characters are explained at the end of the pdfs. It’s only natural that you can’t remember them at first, but as your literacy improves you’ll find yourself looking at the dictionary less and less.

Now I’m runing in my chinese lessons… you rule!!!

Thanks,

Sean

Thanks,

Sean

谢 谢 (Xiè xie - Thank You),
Kevin

http://survivalphrases.com/chinese/2007/06/25/welcome/
http://survivalphrases.com/chinese/2007/06/27/restaurant-1-how-many-people/

Good luck!

I’m from Mexico and I’m very interested in your easy way to teach chinese, my question is: Where can I download the pdf of lessons 11 and 12???

Gracias!!! y hasta pronto!!!

To answer an earlier question:
These phrases are in Mandarin, not Cantonese.

Thanks a lot!

-Cara

Regards,
Richard

Comment: When you say you are going to give a few seconds of silence to respond in the rap up…you really don’t. I can’t keep up & I’m familiar with some of those phrases.

These lessons are a breath of fresh air after working with the Pimsleur method. Pimsleur’s good, but some of the lessons are a bit much to chew at one time & hard to hear proper sounds & tones.

Your lessons are short & relevant. And have added culture info & variations. We experienced oodles of peddlers at the Forbidden City in Nov. It might have been helpful to have those phrases. But…we were with a group that moved pretty quickly & unfortunately couldn’t even stop long enough to use those phrases OR to even take them up on their bargain of Beijing olympic trinkets after we said no 10x.

I would like to know if this the last Survival Phrases Chinese lesson

I want to vote for more lessons and hope the listeners agree with me, thanks! S_R_C

Thank you bringing this to our attention. We have corrected the problem. If you update the podcast in iTunes, the episode should load up.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Eran

I sit in front of the computer a lot. And I’m a lanky guy so my neck KILLS sometimes. Today I woke up with a throbbing pulsating pain in my left shoulder (actually between my shoulder and my neck) and I did what I usually do, when to the 药房 to buy some medicine.

I usually get the same thing. I’ve never known the precise name until today: it’s a box of 远红外肩周炎贴. If all those Chinese characters don’t mean anything to you don’t worry; like I said, I didn’t know what it was called until I looked at the box just now. 远红外肩周炎贴 is the only Chinese medicine that I use and it’s great.

Basically what you get is a box of sticky strips, like band-aids or plasters. They are quite big, the size of 15cm by 10cm (get with the metric system guys) and smell… strange. They don’t smell bad, just weird. A potpourri of vinegar, antiseptic, glue and roses.

You stick them on your shoulder (or wherever you feel pain) and they heat up.

Since I have never known what they are called I usually ask for “tiē zài jiān bǎng shàng de, fā rè de.” (Those things that you stick on your shoulder that emit heat). The people in the store usually know what I mean.

As I write right now, I have a 远红外肩周炎贴 stuck on my left shoulder. It’s heating up nicely, and I don’t feel any of that soreness that was there not 2 minutes ago. It’s great.

So even if you’re skeptical about 中药 (Chinese medicine) I suggest you give 远红外肩周炎贴 a try!

You’re definitely right about the xiansheng (Mr.) and xiaojie (Ms.). Though taitai (Mrs.) is often more appropriate for older women. Don’t want to sound like a walking advertisement, but this and some tips about surnames (like that women don’t take their husband’s family name) are included in the PDFs which are part of the premium package.

Ooooh, I feel dirty just having said that.

Really sorry I haven’t looked at comments in a while, I’ve been busy with a couple other things here in China. (That, and I’m not used to getting comments that actually ask questions. Generally it’s just people posting other information or saying they like the site.) It’s probably too late now, but hopefully you’ll still check in.

This series will have 60 lessons. After that, I believe the site has something else in the works, but I’m not exactly sure what. I’m not actually a member of the company, I just helped them record the lessons, so I don’t take part in the planning. There was talk about me recording more lessons from China, setting up a China branch and stuff like that, but I’m doing other things and won’t have time to be part of it. I hope they’re still going to go through with the expansion of the Chinese lesson series. I liked doing them and it would be nice to see them go on.

Sanjay,

Again, I’m not part of the management, so if there are messages that have been deleted, I would be just as much in the dark as you, but I’d find it surprising if they deleted some messages and then left up ones like the one I’m responding to now or Maxiewawa’s earlier complaints about my tones. It also just doesn’t seem like something the people I know in the company would do. What did critical messages say? I’d like to hear them at least.

And Hindi sounds like a good idea.

Michael

Kinda weird to put this near the end though, it feels weird introducing yourself after 50 or so lessons.

Good point about those last names. If you hear someone introduce themselves using a name that is only one syllable, it’s a safe bet that it’s their surname. From there if you were to address them as (surname) xiansheng or (surname) xiaojie I’m sure many jaws would drop; it’s very polite and the fact that that syllable is their surname is not something that is immediately apparent. Very good in a business setting.

Now you’re going to have a field day with the mistake I make in lesson 47.

Michael

Definitely try to say it when you’re already on your way out the door though. Try to say it before you make your way to the exit and someone will probably stop you going: your boss will ask you to do one last thing or something like that!

Glad to hear it. Let us know if you need anything.

Michael

I’ve also heard 請幫我拍照 qing3 bang1 wo3 pai1 zhao4 as another common way. I’ve not often heard 請幫我照照片 - the two 照’s make it sound clumsy, although i guess you could change it to 請幫我照相片

Just out of curiosity, I wonder how all of you listening, posting and teaching this podcast came to learn Chinese, and what brought you to live in China? The few Americans that I know who went to live in China did so to teach English in their schools. I am getting ready to travel to China in a couple of weeks, just as a tourist, and wanted to at least make the attempt to learn some language! Do any of you have any tips for me as a traveler?

Jennifer

I had a question about the placement of “zai nar”. Lesson 28 used zai nar at the beginning of the sentence, and lesson 29 used it at the end of the sentence, but both sentences seem to be asking the question “Where is something?”. I was just curious about the placement, either the beginning or the end, and what makes it different?

Thanks - Jennifer

It weird sometimes how much people can misunderstand you when you think you’re making yourself perfectly clear. Did she really ask you about 土豆片儿? (Tu dou pianr) One of the problems with Chinese is that even the smallest differences in tone can cause misunderstandings. Chinese people, due to dialect differences and just the way the language naturally lends itself to ambiguity, often misunderstand each other. This is a language that has gone through 5000 years of changes over a land mass the size of Europe (with a similar population size as well, probably). The differences in dialect are huge, and can be very frustrating sometimes. All things considered I think the Chinese are doing a very good job teaching people a standard dialect. I’m not qualified to make this comparison, but from experience I’d say they’re a little past where Europe is in teaching everyone English. (I wonder if anyone’s going to take issue with that. Probably not. As usual I have responded to a post too late.)

Funny story: I was in a restauraunt in Beijing, and everything on the menu was written in 汉字. I was looking around on the walls for some photos, and someone noticed me looking around. She asked me what I was looking for, and I told her, zhào piàn (a photo of what the foods looked like). She furrowed her brow and looked annoyed. “什么？” I knew I was saying it right so I looked just as annoyed at her. I repeated: zhào piàn 有吗？She kept looking peeved and said loudly 什么？土豆片儿？No, that’s not what I said. I wasn’t going to let her get away with making me look like an idiot when I knew I was write, so I wrote down 照片 (Zhao Pian in Chinese)。 She took one look, and said loudly, “Oh! zhào piānRRRRR!” with a loud clear first (flat) tone on the last syllable, and the ‘harrrrr’ pirate sound that so many Beijingers seem to like. At the time I assumed she was from one of the Western provinces where people don’t speak mandarin very well. Only when I went home and looked up the character did I find 2 pronunciations listed.
So many (ignorant) people wish the Chinese would hurry up and learn English; I just wish that they would all learn the same version of Chinese…
http://www.dict.cn/search/?q=%C6%AC

It’s great to see a comment after so long without one. Thanks for letting us know you like the podcasts.

Unfortunately, from what I hear, the podcasts will only go on for about the 60 lessons that I recorded. (The company is in Japan and I am back in China, so I’m not exactly the most “in the loop.̶ Survival Phrases is going to be trying to have beginner lessons for lots of languages (30 or so, I believe) so there’s not really time to be recording more lessons for Chinese. Maybe sometime later on, once they’ve gotten to a bunch more languages, we can do some follow up lessons. That’d be a lot of fun.

So you’re starting to take Chinese classes. Have you taken Japanese before? Be warned, the first month of Chinese classes can be brutal. But you’ll get past that. Chinese is that kind of language, it starts out very hard, but once you get acclimated to the ideas, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

If you have any other questions (about anything), leave a post.

Xiexie la!

Michael

This coming semester im taking my first Chinese Class. Ive been listening to your program for about a week now. It will be intresting to see how far this will take me. Ive really had a lot of success with JapanesePod.

This shows host is really great. Hes really direct and to the point. I really hope the series continiues for along time to come.

Which brings me to the question, How long will this survival series continiue for? Will lessons continualy be advancing? is this eventually going to lead to a ChinesePod101 site ?

Well, anyway, im thrilled you guys started these series and im sure its going to be a big aid for Chinese Class. Ill let you know how my progress goes once school starts.

zai jian , xie xie

The downside is that if you just want to type directly, you’ll have to change the input method. The easiest way to do this is to yell out ‘请帮我’ (qing bang wo, please help me) to one of the attendants, or one of the pimply guys sitting next you playing computer games. It’ll take him two clicks to change it to ‘direct input’.

When you accidentally change it back (and trust me, it’s easy to do), don’t panic, just yell out ‘请帮我’ again, and get the same guy to help you!

This is probably a really stupid question, but do the keyboards have the standard alphabet and number pad on them?? I always wondered how the Chinese characters could be typed out on a computer, which made me think of keyboards! Also, if I do manage to get on a computer at the internet cafe, and click on the explorer icon to bring up internet explorer, I assume that I can type in any website (for example www.comcast.net) and bring up Comcast’s home page in English? I’ve never used internet in a foreign country before, so this will be a new experience!

Thanks,
Jennifer

Long time no see.

Yeah, foreigners can cut through a lot of red tape in China just by pretending they don’t understand (or by not actually understanding). It requires a lot of effort to communicate with a foreigner who doesn’t speak Chinese, so people often let you just pass by without bothering. The flip side of this is that if you show interest in speaking Chinese, many people will be extremely nice and helpful. Most Chinese people don’t often get to meet foreigners that speak Chinese.

Glad you think the lesson is useful.

Thank you for reporting the broken link and apologies for the inconvenience. The issue has been corrected and the PDF should now be accessible.

Thank you,

- Eran

Jennifer

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this one, you probably won’t even check this post at this point. Partially I was embarrassed that you criticized my tones (though I think you had it more rightly in your first post. I think my “一” (yi1) was more clearly a first tone when I said it slowly. When I said it quickly, the tone changed.) The second reason I took my time in responding was that I wanted to make sure I got my response right.

Technically, here “一” should be second tone because it precedes “遍” which is fourth tone. “一” normally is said with a first tone, but when it comes before a fourth tone, it is changed to second tone. When it precedes any other tone, it becomes a fourth tone. There are, however, many exceptions to this rule (like when saying dates or years or names.) I felt it was best not to introduce this so early on in the course. In the course we will continue to treat “一” as a first tone. You may be right about me messing up the tone. Maybe I was accidentally changing it to a second tone. Unfortunately, I am still a 老外.

For all you beginners out there, feel free to ignore this rule for now, it won’t effect your speech much at all. But if anyone wants me to spell the rule out more clearly, along with all the exceptions, just put up a post and I will do that.

And maxie, thanks. You are easily the most active person on the site. Thanks for showing your interest and taking your time.

Michael

Hehe, one in the same. But I don’t actually use this one for Chinese, just the Japanese and Korean I don’t have anything to add to those yet, unfortunately, though, so I commented here!

Michael,

No subway in Jilin, but 借光 is pretty useful on the bus, too.

Hope that helped. If it didn’t, let me know where I was unclear. And thanks for stopping by, we really appreciate the comments and questions. (Lets us know that we’re not just broadcasting into the void.)

Yes, they show the first listing you mentioned above (ce4suo3).

Jennifer

There’s subway in Jilin?

I don’t think that any of this vocabulary is very useful here in Shanghai though, I can’t imagine many everyday social situations where one would apologize! I guess it’s a cultural thing though. I find it funny that 老师 mentioned apologising when using bad table manners. I can’t possibly imagine what bad table manners are here in China!

You do hear 让一下 a lot on the metro, but more common is the ‘Hey!’ which comes just before, or during, a shove in the back.

You wouldn’t possibly be the same John B from another podcast website that teaches 中文? I am the same maxiewawa.

Thanks - Jennifer

I think you’ve got the tone wrong on 一 when you say it quickly. You’ve got a 3rd tone instead of 1st. I guess the two 1st tones of 说 and 一 are a bit tricky. It’s a bit hard to get two flat tones; it’s a bit like singing.

It sounds perfect when you say it slowly though.

Have a listen, hope if helps everyone!

Where did you hear that greeting, Maxie?

Glad to hear your friends like the phrases, Sindy.

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

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 survival phrases lessons! I’m going to subscribe to all languages right now, they are all great and beautiful!

We should have a Forum like in JP101 that would also be great too! S_R_C

Also, reguarding thank you, I know that xie xie is thanks, but I head some people in China say “xie xie ni.” “Ni”, meaning “you.” You could probably translate the differences between “xie xie” and “xie xie ni” as just “thanks” and “thank you,” but are there any more nuances to adding “ni” after “xie xie?”