A small dialogue

1: Ni shen me shi hou lai Beijing?
2: Wo san yue lai.
1: Hao de.

1: When are you coming to Beijing?
2: I'm coming in March.
1: Okay.

ChinesePod.com

I have now bought a one year subscription on chinesepod.com! I think it is a great resource for learning mandarin. I hope this will help me to study more effectively. If you want to check it out, all newbie lesson podcasts are available for free. However if you want access to all levels, PDF transcripts and much more, you have to subscribe.

Jin tian: Chong fu

Can you please repeat?

Qing wen, ni neng chong fu yi bian ma?

Qing wen = please
Ni = you
Neng = can
chong fu = repeat
yi bian = once
ma = ?

Jin tian: Shou ji

Wo zong shi wang le shuo ji zhen me shuo.

Zong shi = always
wang le = forget
zhen me shuo = how to say/speak

...and shou ji means telephone.

Zai jian!

Jin tian: Che

Today I blog just to remember the word for car which I for some reason always forget...
So the word for car is "che".

And some other related words:

Turn left = zuo zhuan
Turn right = you zhuan
Drive = kai

Wo ai kai che!

Duo shao qian?

No time to blog today, so I'll just post this one useful question: Duo shao qian? which means How much is it? How much does it cost?


Ming tian jian!

What is Pinyin and Mandarin?

Oh well, another English post...

According to Wikipedia, Pinyin means "phonetics" ("spelling sound") and "is currently the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin."

So what is standard mandarin?

Again, as Wikipedia states "Standard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore."

That's all we need to know for now. Head over to Wikipedia if you are interested in finding out more.

Yán sè - Colors

I don't know why, but I always forget the colors. So here I go:

• lán sè - blue
• hóng sè - red
• huáng sè - yellow
• lù sè - green
• bái sè - white
• hei sè - black

That's the most used ones. Maybe I will write another post with more "advanced" colors later.

Zai jian :-)

Welcome

In this blog I will pracise writing pinyin. Hopefully this will be the first and last post that is written in English.

This blog is just for my personal learning. I figured I should write more in order to more easily memorize the different words. I will probably make a lot of mistakes, so feel free to correct me After all, that's how we learn, isn't it? ;-)

Zai jian!