11 Crucial Chinese Phrases You Must Know Before You Go to China 

robert charlton Clearly she learned from you.

LMAO

Lol.

hahaha

and then the bride finally added: "do me on the counter... right here"

Nali nali means like 'no, no stop it, i dont' Alan Chang

Haha, I get it

+Yoloanda hahahahahahahahaha this made me laugh

Yoloanda Me too. 😂😂😂

Yoloanda 那你怎么看到这个视频 哈哈哈哈哈

Yoloanda you are just like me

哈哈哈

hmmm....perhaps we will :-)

Yay!

Off the Great Wall Could you teach the sign language used for numbers that people use to bargain? That would be great :)

Annalisa Steinnes born in China, raised in China, spend a lot of time in China, I have never seen those hand signal numbers used.

Oyibo Boy Which region did you live in? I've seen them in Guangdong. Maybe they use them for foreigners. But once I could speak some of the language, I didn't see the hand signs as much.

I think it's because it's rare for a Bai Ren/Gweilo to learn and speak an Asian language cool, It is also expected nowaday for anyone to speak english. It would be like that with any other language I think, and asian languages even more, because a sort of popular conception has it, that they are complicated as hell with tons of symbols! :o

I think it's just the culture. As an American, I appreciate English speakers by listening to their ideas as they express them in my language and try my best not to interrupt them. To them, I feel, they must express the fact that they think it's cool that I learned Chinese (often in the form of 你的中文很好 when it is, in fact, abysmal) in order for me to understand their appreciation. Before I got here, I was told that the Chinese are quite subtle with their social cues - which is quite true in some ways - but they're quite straightforward in just as many ways, I believe.

English is very easy compared to *any* other language in the world and has become an international language. Chinese, on the other hand, is *very difficult* to write and pronounce for *all* people. I, for one, find Chinese fascinating when spoken by Chinese people. It is not *who* speaks it, it is *the language* that fascinates.

Quest for Truth disagree. English is one of the hardest languages to learn if you didn't grow up with it (in some form). Part of the reason being, there are so many 'exceptions to the rule' situations that are hard for English learners to pick up and understand. English is so difficult, even a large amount of native Enlglish speakers have a hard time using the language correctly.

This is not true. English speakers have just a fine time using English. It's their language; it's literally impossible for native speakers (barring abnormalities) to consistently misuse their own language. English for non-Western language speakers tends to be very difficult to learn because it's so different to them. Questions are formed very differently (Chinese questions make a lot more sense to me: "you want go store (yes/no)?" You can even ask something like, "leave/not leave?") in English than most (if not all) Asian languages. There are also many sounds that are made in English that aren't made in Chinese, and some sounds that they make that many speakers of different dialects/language (depending on the perspective you take) don't distinguish - the most common one probably being "s/sh," which gets confusing for me (WHAT DO YOU MEAN 10?! YOU CLEARLY SAID 4! Oh, second tone? Well, I forgive you.... today). Chinese speakers specifically have problems with grammar because morphology as we're familiar with it simply doesn't exist in that language. "Tenses" (I'm not sure you can truly call them tenses as you'd be stuck in the awkward situation of saying that things like 今天，昨天，明天 [today, yesterday, tomorrow] are "tensing" verbs, which gets pretty sticky) moods, and aspects (probably what we should mean when we say "tenses") all come from single-word particles that are tagged on to the end of verb phrases or sentences (I have yet to completely figure this rule out for myself, so apologies in advance for any mistakes in upcoming examples, but the point remains the same). They even distinguish things we'd never distinguish in a similar manner (e.g., "Did you ever go to that store?" 你去商店过吗？ (you go store (experiential past) (yes/no)?) v. "Did you go to the store?" 你去商店了吗？(you go store (past perfective) (yes/no)?) They have particles for things that we have to use adverbs for. There are certainly many more differences that lead to Chinese English Learners having more language interference than your average English Learner, but from personal experience, morphological tense/inflection is very difficult for many Chinese English speakers. From close friends to my girlfriend, they'll often misuse or overapply the present progressive, perfective, simple present, or whatever. This is to say nothing of infinitival phrases, which I'm not sure how my girlfriend will react when I tell her that, sometimes, verbs are added into sentences in the exact same way as in Chinese. Long story short, English isn't the most difficult language. It's truly a bastard language, to be sure, having its roots in Germanic origins and then having its mother country invaded many times, not least of which by the Norman French in 1066. And then it took over most of the world for a not insignificant period of time and is now considered the language of international business. But I wouldn't say it's any harder, on average, for someone to learn English than, say, Chinese. Each language has its own nuances and annoyances that one must deal with to successfully learn a language, and English is no different.

lol

haha, I will make sure to remember the whole phrase 好胖老外

@Radio 4Men I like it

Radio 4Men muscled is very different from fat tho

Thanks!

Cool, glad we could help!

My children are studying Chinese...I'll have to show this to them!

No problem, have fun! Congrats on your son :-)

Thanks!!!

Thanks for watching! Glad these could be one day helpful :-)

Thanks for watching!

Your enthusiasm is contagious so easy to understand! I wish you would repeat the sentence more than just one time, please. ❤❤❤

The Flying Spaghetti Monster I agree with you 100%, I think it Chinese way Fast and Loud.

+Thimm eE. usually languages you don't speak sound faster than your native language

No, Chinese is just naturally faster than English

+Sumaiya Afrin Thanks for the advertisement... -_-

Thanks!

Yea people who never ate real spicy food would get a rude awakening

Off the Great Wall There's a story I usually tell my non-Asian friends about that. As an ABC you'd think I'd fare a little better, but I remember eating in a corner stall in Chengdu right before I left for college and suffering through the amount of spice that was in the food. My stepmom's friend's daughter was eating the same thing next to us and found it not spicy. She was 11.

Just for you we will ;-)

Off the Great Wall Thank you so much ! ^_^

we are happy you found us as well :-)

where do u want to go ? I'm Chinese here ! Are u going to travel ? Maybe I can recommend some places if u need :)

Matt Bai Thanks for the suggestion, but I have it planned already. :) I found out about this place wikitravel.org/en/Pingyao and now it's the main attraction for my visit this time. I'm also going to spend some time in Beijing, but it will be my second time there, so I'll mostly know my way around there.

We are still looking for a canto replacement, will do canto soon as we can :-)

Yea if your western especially, Chinese people would be very surprised you would know that phrase

Personally I use tai for like complaining about something in higher tones. Tai is more expressive then hen. Tai is more like extremely, when hen means very.

Owen's dunking progress 5'6 Tai is so or too (Chinese do not differentiate between the two) and you use it in sentences like she is so pretty (ta Tai piaoliang le) or I'm too fat (wo tai pang le). Hen (很) is translated as very, you use in sentences such as I am hungry (wo hen e) or I am tired (wo hen lei), this does not actually convey that you are 'very' tired or hungry. This is a general grammar rule that in Chinese you can't just say wo e, hen must be used before the e (hungry).

Owen's dunking progress 5'6 Tai is so or too (Chinese do not differentiate between the two) and you use it in sentences like she is so pretty (ta Tai piaoliang le) or I'm too fat (wo tai pang le). Hen (很) is translated as very, you use in sentences such as I am hungry (wo hen e) or I am tired (wo hen lei), this does not actually convey that you are 'very' tired or hungry. This is a general grammar rule that in Chinese you can't just say wo e, hen must be used before the e (hungry).

Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching :-)

Yes we didn't want to blindside ppl with some of the rural 'toilets'

Nice!

In Hong Kong you can speak Cantonese and mandarin

Yeah... My boyfriend just told me that he's learning cantonese now. He said there are a lot of people who only speak cantonese and can't speak mandarine. Is that so?

That sounds kinda complicated :-) Some of my boyfriend's colleagues there are originally chinese, but grew up in Indonesia. My boyfriend's mom is also chinese, so he's mixed. And they learned mandarine before. But when they tried to use the language, the Hong Kong people just laughed at them. Maybe it just sounds really, really funny to them :-) His stories seems very exciting but hard to imagine for me.

Oh cool! Seems you know some Chinese already :-) Thanks for watching :-)

Miss cocokitty when will you post more videos we miss you

Pretty sure you speak 漢語. 中文 is the written language I think.

both are okay :)

+Petrifyer saying 我不會說漢語 is pretty wierd

Do people still use gei li and zhen neng liang...? As in, would it still be "cool" to use it...? xD I've heard of gei li before. :)

I'm Sarah Some still do on weibo. I've seen it.

Nice! See how many of these you can use :-)

Thanks for watching!

Much more powerful than regular squats!

pickle is 酸菜 or 泡菜 in Chinese

Did you learn any of these on the spot while you were there?

no what i did was hold up some money since i didnt know how much when i needed to buy a soda th lady help up 3 fingers meaning 3 rmb but i didnt haave much trouble comunicating with small shops some knew a few english words. which helped

yes

What is msg??

+Mary Yen basically an umami salt. It's not actually harmful to humans but some people have low tolerances for it like gluten. If you don't get a headache from eating it, there's no other reason to avoid it

MSG is a abbreviation of Monosodium Glutamate, we Chinese call it "味精".