Chinese For Dummies

Introduction

Globalization has made familiarity with other people, cultures, and languages not only preferable but also essential in the 21st century. With the help of the Internet and a bevy of social media growing at a dizzying rate, reaching out and touching someone on the other side of the earth has become as easy as clicking a mouse, using a smartphone, or clicking on to RenRen (the Chinese equivalent of Facebook) or Weibo (the Twitter of China). And yet nothing quite beats the excitement of a face-to-face encounter with someone who hails from the other side of the globe in his or her own language. Communication in cyberspace doesn’t even come close.

Whether you’re an inveterate traveler, going overseas for business, studying abroad, adopting a child, interested in frequenting Chinatown, befriending a Chinese-speaking classmate or co-worker, or just plain curious about China, Chinese For Dummies, 3rd Edition, can help you get acquainted with enough Chinese to carry on a decent conversation on any number of topics. You won’t become fluent instantly, of course, but this book helps you greet a stranger, buy a plane ticket, talk to Chinese students, converse with business colleagues, and order some food. It also gives you some invaluable cultural tips so that you not only rattle off those newly acquired words and phrases but also back them up with the right behavior at the right time.

I designed this book to help guide you toward the successful use of one of the most difficult languages on earth. Chinese should also just be plain fun to learn.

About This Book

The good news is that you can use Chinese For Dummies, 3rd Edition, anytime, anywhere. No mandatory class sessions, no exams, and no homework assignments to dread. Need to get to a new city for a business meeting? Just turn to the chapters on travel or business to find out how to buy a plane ticket, get through customs, get to the airport on time, or do some negotiating. Have to make a sudden trip to the doctor? Turn to the chapter on your health and figure out in advance how to tell your caregivers exactly what ails you.

Pay attention to a few conventions that can help you navigate this book’s contents:

Chinese terms are set in boldface to make them stand out.

Pronunciations and meanings appear in parentheses immediately after the Chinese terms. The English translations are in italics.

This book uses the pīnyīn 拼音 (pin-yin) (Literally: spelling the way it sounds) Romanization system of Chinese words. What does that mean? Well, if you go to China, you see signs in Chinese characters all around, but if you look for something in English, you may be hard-pressed to find it. Whatever signs you see in Roman letters will be of pīnyīn, the Romanization system developed by the Communists in the 1950s, so seeing pīnyīn in this book is good practice for you.

In this edition of Chinese For Dummies, Chinese characters have been added in many places and appear after the initial transliteration from the pīnyīn. Chinese characters are fun to try to decipher. The Chinese have been working at precisely that for thousands of years, especially for the more complicated characters that took as many as 20 separate strokes of the writing brush to create traditional Chinese characters.

Lucky for you, many of the more complicated Chinese characters were simplified in the early 20th century to make them easier to read and write, and these are used in mainland China today. (You can read more about Chinese characters in Chapter 2.) The original (or traditional) characters are still used in Taiwan. In this book, simplified characters appear first, followed in parentheses by the traditional characters. Characters that were never simplified don’t have any separate notation in parentheses.

Another thing you should keep in mind as you begin to understand Chinese is that many of the English translations you see in this book aren’t exactly literal. Knowing the gist of what you hear or see is more important than knowing what individual words in any given phrase mean. For example, the Chinese phrase meaning so-so literally translates as horse horse tiger tiger even though you’re not actually talking about animals. Whenever I give a literal translation, I preface it with Literally.

The following elements in this book help reinforce the new terms and phrases you’re studying:

Talkin’ the Talk dialogues: Nothing beats seeing and hearing an actual conversation to learn Chinese, so I intersperse dialogues throughout the book under the heading Talkin’ the Talk. They show you the Chinese words, the pronunciations, and the English translations, and I often put cultural do’s and don’ts into context, which should come in handy. Many of these dialogues appear in the accompanying online audio tracks so you can practice the sentences after you hear how they should sound. With the tonal nature of the Chinese language, this feature is indispensable as you learn Chinese.

Words to Know: These boxes come after the Talkin’ the Talk dialogues and highlight useful additional words beyond the dialogue.

Fun & Games activities: Working through word games, cracking crossword puzzles, or recalling some phrases to fill in the blanks can be a fun way to review the words and phrases you encounter in each chapter. This element is a great way to gauge your progress and tease your brain at the same time. Look for these activities at the end of each chapter.

The beauty of this book is that it can be all things to all people. You don’t have to memorize Chapter 5 before moving on to Chapter 6 if what Chapter 6 deals with is what you really need. Each chapter provides you with different bits of information about the Chinese language and highlights different parts of Chinese grammar. Read as much or as little as you want, as quickly or as slowly as you like. Whatever interests you is what you should focus on. And remember: You’re discovering a language that simultaneously represents one of the world’s oldest civilizations and one of its fastest-growing economies in the 21st century.

Foolish Assumptions

Some of the foolish assumptions I made about you while writing Chinese For Dummies, 3rd Edition, are that

You don’t know any Chinese, except for maybe a couple of words you picked up from a good kung-fu movie or the word tofu, which you picked up while grocery shopping.

Your goal in life isn’t to become an interpreter of Chinese at the U.N.; you just want to pick up some useful words, phrases, and sentence constructions to make yourself understood in a Chinese-speaking environment.

You have no intention of spending hours and hours memorizing Chinese vocabulary and grammar patterns.

You basically want to have fun while speaking a little Chinese.

Icons Used in This Book

Cute little icons occasionally appear in the left-hand margins, next to sidebars, and with the Talkin’ the Talk dialogues throughout this book. These beacons shed light on what kind of information you’re looking at and can help you locate certain types of information in a hurry. The five icons used in this book are as follows:

tip The bull’s-eye appears wherever I’ve highlighted a great idea to help make your study of Chinese easier.

remember This icon, appropriately showing a string around a finger, should serve as a reminder about particularly important information concerning Chinese.

warning This icon should act as a stop sign in your mind. It warns you about things to avoid saying or doing so that you don’t make a fool of yourself overseas or with a new Chinese friend.

culturalwisdom This icon clues you in on fascinating bits of information about China and Chinese culture. Knowledge of a culture goes hand in hand with knowledge of a foreign language, so these icons help light the way as you embark on your journey.

grammarchat This icon highlights various rules of grammar that may be out of the norm. Even though this book doesn’t focus primarily on grammar, your successful execution of the language can only be enhanced by paying attention to little grammatical rules as they pop up.

Beyond the Book

This book is full of useful information, but you can find even more online! Check out this book’s Cheat Sheet, which contains useful questions, common expressions, phrases used in emergencies, the Chinese calendar, and Chinese numbers all in a handy portable format. Just go to www.dummies.com and search for Chinese For Dummies Cheat Sheet.

You can also hear all the Talkin’ the Talk dialogues provided in the book to get a better handle on correct pronunciation. Just go to www.dummies.com/go/chinesefd.

Where to Go from Here

Chinese is often considered one of the toughest languages in the world to master. Don’t worry. The good news is that you’re not trying to master it. All you want to do is be understandable when you open your mouth so that you don’t ask for the men’s room when you really want the ladies’ room. All you have to do now is keep listening to and repeating the words and phrases you find in this book. Turn to whichever chapter piques your curiosity, listen to the accompanying online audio tracks at home or in your car, and keep practicing your favorite Chinese phrases when you’re with your family and friends in Chinatown.

Part 1

Getting Started with Chinese

IN THIS PART …

Get the lowdown on all the essentials of Chinese.

Find out how to pronounce Chinese sounds (and tones) like a native.

Discover how to make sense of the Chinese writing system.

Practice stringing Chinese words together so that they make sense.

Figure out how to count in Chinese.

Try speaking Chinese around your home.

Communicate in Chinese with all the cultural trimmings.

Chapter 1

Chinese in a Nutshell: The Spoken Word

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Exploring Chinese dialects

check Taking a look at the pīnyīn system

check Getting a handle on basic Chinese sounds

check Understanding basic Chinese idioms, phrases, and gestures

Time to get your feet wet with the basics of Chinese. This chapter gives you guidelines that help you pronounce words in standard Mandarin (the official language of both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan) like a native speaker and helps you get a handle on the four tones that distinguish Mandarin Chinese. You also find out about the kind of Chinese characters used to write in Taiwan (traditional) versus the kind of characters written in the People’s Republic of China (simplified). (Spoiler alert: To get a jump-start on China’s thousand-year-old writing system, check out Chapter 2.) After you have the basics down, I show you how to construct basic Chinese phrases.

But before you dive in, here’s a bit of advice: Don’t be intimidated by all the tones! The best thing you can do when learning a foreign language is to not worry about making mistakes the minute you open your mouth. Practice speaking Chinese first to your dog or cat, and then work your way up to a couple of goldfish or a niece or nephew under the age of 10. When you finally get the nerve to rattle off a few phrases to your local Chinatown grocer, you’ll know you’ve made it. And when you visit China for the first time, you discover how incredibly appreciative the Chinese are of anyone who even remotely attempts to speak their language. All the hours you spent yakking away with the family pet start to pay off, and you’ll be rewarded greatly. Still have doubts? You’ll be amazed at how much you can say after snooping through Chinese For Dummies, 3rd Edition.

remember Encountering the Chinese culture is just as important as exploring the Chinese language. In fact, you can’t quite master the language without absorbing a little of the culture by osmosis. Just making the effort to speak Chinese is an act of positive diplomacy. Don’t worry about how you sound when you open your mouth — you’re contributing to international friendship no matter what comes out.

Grasping Chinese Dialects

Give yourself a big pat on the back right now. Yup, right now — before you even begin to utter one iota of Chinese. If you don’t do it now, you may be too shocked later on when it sinks in that you’ve taken on a language that has hundreds (yes, hundreds) of dialects — each one mutually incomprehensible to speakers of the other ones. Practically every major town, and certainly every province, in China has its own regional dialect that folks grow up learning. Of the seven major dialects (outlined in Table 1-1), Shanghainese, Taiwanese, and Cantonese are the ones you may have heard of before.

TABLE 1-1 Major Chinese Dialects

And then you have Mandarin, dialect of the masses. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people on earth than any other language today. Pretty much a quarter of humanity uses it, given China’s immense population. So just why was this particular dialect chosen to become the official dialect taught in all schools throughout China, regardless of whatever additional dialects people speak at home or in their communities?

culturalwisdom With only four tones, Guānhuà 官话 (官話) (Gwan-hwah) (Mandarin [Literally: the language of the officials, who were also known as Mandarins]) has served as the hybrid language of China since the 15th century because this dialect was based on the educated speech of the region around Beijing. Instead of referring to it as Guānhuà, mainlanders in China now call it Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 (普通話) (Poo-toong-hwah) (Literally: the common language). People in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, and in overseas Chinese communities call it Guóyǔ 国语 (國語) (Gwaw-yew) (Literally: the national language). You may also hear it referred to as Zhōngwén 中文 (Joong-wun) (the language of the Chinese people) and Hànyǔ 汉语 (漢語) (Hahn-yew) (the language of the Han people), because the Chinese have often referred to themselves as descendants of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), one of the golden eras of Chinese history. Because Chinese is the language of ethnic Chinese and China’s minority groups, the more all-encompassing term Zhōngwén is preferred.

tip The term Pǔtōnghuà is used to refer to Mandarin in the People’s Republic of China, and the term Guóyǔ is the term used for Mandarin in Taiwan. You can simply say Hànyǔ anywhere.

Pīnyīn Spelling: Beijing, Not Peking

To spell the way it sounds … that’s the literal meaning of pīnyīn 拼音. For decades, Chinese had been transliterated (written/spelled with the characters of other languages’ alphabets) in any number of ways. Finally, in 1979, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) officially adopted pīnyīn as its official Romanization system. After the adoption, U.S. libraries and government agencies diligently changed all their prior records from other Romanization systems into pīnyīn.

You should keep in mind the following quick facts about some of the initial sounds in Mandarin when you see them written in the relatively new pīnyīn system:

J: Sounds like the g in gee whiz. An i often follows a j. Jǐ kuài qián? 几块钱? (幾塊錢)? (Jee kwye chyan?) means How much money?

Q: Sounds like the ch in cheek. In Chinese, you never see it followed by a u like it is in English, but an i always follows it, possibly before another vowel or a consonant. Qīngdǎo 青岛 (青島) (Cheeng-daow) beer used to be spelled Ch’ing tao or Tsingtao.

X: Sounds like the sh in she. It’s the third letter that’s often followed by an i. One famous Chinese leader, Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平 (鄧小平) (Dung Shyaow-peeng), boasted this letter in his name.

Zh: Unlike j, which often precedes a vowel to make it sound like you’re opening your mouth, zh is followed by vowels that make it sound like your mouth is a bit more closed like you’re about to play the flute — it sounds like the ger in German. Take Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 (周恩來) (Joe Un-lye), the great statesman of 20th-century China, for example. When you say his name, it should sound like Joe Un-lye.

Z: Sounds like a dz. You see it in the name of the PRC’s first leader, Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 (毛澤東) (Maow Dzuh-doong), which used to be spelled Mao Tse-tung.

C: Pronounced like ts in such words as cài 菜 (tsye) (food) or cèsuǒ 厕所 (廁所) (tsuh-swaw) (bathroom).

Sounding Off: Basic Chinese Sounds

Don’t worry about sounding like a native speaker the first time you utter a Chinese syllable — after all, who can? But the longer you procrastinate about becoming familiar with the basic elements of Chinese words, the greater your fear of this unique language may become. After you begin to practice the sounds (and eventually the tones) out loud, you may wonder if you’ll ever come close to sounding like Bruce Lee in a gōngfū 功夫 (goong-foo) (kung-fu) movie or even like your local Chinatown grocer. Hearing Chinese spoken at a normal speed is definitely intimidating at the beginning, so you should enjoy taking plenty of baby steps and reveling in the praise from waiters who appreciate all your effort the next time you frequent a Chinese restaurant.

grammarchat The main thing to remember about the Chinese language is that each morpheme (the smallest unit of meaning in a language) is represented by one syllable, which in turn consists of an initial sound and a final sound, topped off by a tone. This rule applies to each and every syllable. Without any one of these three components, your words may be incomprehensible to the average Chinese person. For example, the syllable mā 妈 (媽) is comprised of the initial m and the final a, and you pronounce it with what’s called a first tone. Together, the parts mean mother. If you substitute the first tone for a third tone, which is written as mǎ, 马 (馬) you say the word horse. So be careful not to call your mother a horse when you practice the initials, finals, and tones. The following sections break up the three parts and give each their due.

remember Before you can participate in sports or play games, you must become familiar with all the rules. The same goes for practicing a new language. Do your best to understand the basic rules of pronunciation, and keep practicing over and over to begin feeling comfortable speaking Chinese.

Starting off with initials

In Chinese, initials always consist of consonants. Table 1-2 lists the initials you encounter in the Chinese language. (Note: You can also hear these sounds by going online to www.dummies.com/go/chinesefd.)

TABLE 1-2 Chinese Initials

remember The initials -n and -r in Table 1-2 can also appear as part of finals, so don’t be surprised if you see them in Table 1-3, where I list finals.

TABLE 1-3 Chinese Finals

Ending with finals

Chinese boasts many more consonants than vowels. In fact, the language has only six vowels all together: a, o, e, i, u, and ü. If you pronounce the vowels in sequence, your mouth starts off very wide and your tongue starts off very low. Eventually, when you get to ü, your mouth becomes much more closed and your tongue ends pretty high. You can also combine the vowels in various ways to form compound vowels. Table 1-3 lists the vowels and some possible combinations, which comprise all the finals in Chinese.

Perfect pitch: Presenting … the four tones!

Mee meeeee (cough cough)! Pardon me. I’m getting carried away with warming up before I get into the four tones. Just think of the tones this way: They can be your best friends when it comes to being understood in Chinese, and they’re the hip part of this ancient language.

If you combine all the possible initial sounds of Chinese with all the possible permutations of the final sounds, you come up with only about 400 sound combinations — not nearly enough to express all the ideas in your head. If you add the four basic tones of Mandarin to the mix, the number of possible permutations increases fourfold. Tones are also a great way to reduce the number of homophones in Chinese. Even so, any given syllable with a specific tone can often have more than one meaning. Sometimes, the only way to decipher the intended meaning is to see the written word.

Mandarin has only four tones. The best way to imagine what each of the four tones sounds like is to visualize these short descriptions:

First tone: High level. The first tone is supposed to be as high as your individual pitch range can be without wavering. It appears like this above the letter a:ā. (Imagine saying Ta Da-a-a-ah! and you’ve got the first tone.)

Second tone: Rising. The second tone sounds like you’re asking a question. (Think: Huh?) It goes from the middle level of your voice to the top. It doesn’t automatically indicate that you’re asking a question, however — it just sounds like you are. It appears like this above the letter a:á.

Third tone: Falling and then rising. The third tone starts in the middle level of your voice range and then falls deeply before slightly rising at the end. It looks like this above the letter a:ǎ. (Imagine someone being incredulous at something, saying "Say whaaat?")

Fourth tone: Falling. The fourth tone sounds like you’re giving someone an order (unlike the more plaintive-sounding second tone). It falls from the high pitch level it starts at. Here’s how it looks above the letter a:à. (This sounds more like the rather blasé, Oh, once you’ve understood something — like the tone.)

I know this tone business (especially the nuances in the following sections) all sounds very complicated, but when you get the hang of tones, pronunciation becomes second nature. Just keep listening to the online audio files that accompany this book. These concepts will sink in quicker than you expect.

One third tone after another

Here’s something interesting about tones: When you have to say one third tone followed by another third tone out loud in consecutive fashion, the first one actually becomes a second tone. If you hear someone say Tā hěn hǎo. 她很好. (Tah hun how.) (She’s very well.), you may not realize that both hěn 很 and hǎo 好 individually are third-tone syllables. It sounds like hén is a second tone and hǎo is a full third tone.

Half-third tones

Whenever a third tone is followed by any of the other tones — first, second, fourth, or even a neutral tone — it becomes a half-third tone. You pronounce only the first half of the tone — the falling half — before you pronounce the other syllables with the other tones. In fact, a half-third tone barely falls at all. It sounds more like a level, low tone (kind of the opposite of the high-level first tone). Get it?

Neutral tones

A fifth tone exists that you can’t exactly count among the four basic tones because it’s actually toneless, or neutral. You never see a tone mark over a fifth tone, and you say it only when you attach it to grammatical particles or the second character of repetitive syllables, such as bàba 爸爸 (bah-bah) (father) or māma 妈妈 (媽媽) (mah-mah) (mother).

Tonal changes in yī and bù

Just when you think you’re getting a handle on all the possible tones and tone changes in Chinese, I have one more aspect to report: The words yī 一 (ee) (one) and bù 不 (boo) (not or no) are truly unusual in Chinese, in that their tones may change automatically depending on what comes after them. You pronounce yī by itself with the first tone. However, when a first, second, or third tone follows it, yī instantly turns into a fourth tone, such as in yì zhāng zhǐ 一张纸 (一張紙) (ee jahng jir) (a piece of paper). If a fourth tone follows yī, however, it automatically becomes a second tone, such as in the word yíyàng 一样 (一樣) (ee-yahng) (the same).

Adding Idioms and Popular Expressions to Your Repertoire

The Chinese language has thousands of idiomatic expressions known as chéngyǔ 成语 (成語) (chung-yew). Most of these chéngyǔ originated in anecdotes, fables, fairy tales, or ancient literary works, and some of the expressions are thousands of years old. The vast majority consist of four characters, succinctly expressing morals behind very long, ancient stories. Others are more than four characters. Either way, the Chinese pepper these pithy expressions throughout any given conversation.

Here are a few chéngyǔ you frequently hear in Chinese:

àn bù jiù bān 按部就班 (ahn boo jyoe bahn) (to take one step at a time)

hú shuō bā dào 胡说八道 (胡說八道) (hoo shwaw bah daow) (to talk nonsense [Literally: to talk nonsense in eight directions])

huǒ shàng jiā yóu 火上加油 (hwaw shahng jyah yo) (to add fuel to the fire/to aggravate the problem)

mò míng qí miào. 莫名其妙. (Maw meeng chee meow.) (Literally: No one can explain the wonder and mystery of it all.) This saying describes anything that’s tough to figure out, including unusual behavior.

quán xīn quán yì 全心全意 (chwan sheen chwan ee) (wholeheartedly [Literally: entire heart, entire mind])

rù xiāng suí sú. 入乡随俗. (入鄉隨俗.) (Roo shyahng sway soo.) (When in Rome, do as the Romans do.)

yì jǔ liǎng dé 一举两得 (一舉兩得) (ee jyew lyahng duh) (to kill two birds with one stone)

yì mó yí yàng 一模一样 (一模一樣) (ee maw ee yahng) (exactly alike)

yǐ shēn zuò zé 以身作则 (以身作則) (ee shun dzwaw dzuh) (to set a good example)

yì zhēn jiàn xiě 一针见血 (一針見血) (ee jun jyan shyeh) (to hit the nail on the head)

Another fact you quickly become aware of when you