Basics About Chinese Characters
There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands.
For an English word, the Chinese translation (or the Chinese 'word') often consists of two or more Chinese characters. You should use them together and read them from left to right. If you want to arrange them vertically, the one on the leftmost should go to the top.
There are two Chinese characters for English (the language), which are ying1 yu3 in Pinyin. Pinyin is the international standard romanization scheme for Chinese characters, which is useful for learning the phonetics of Mandarin. There are four tones in Pinyin and we use the numbers here, i.e., 1, 2, 3, and 4, to depict the four tones. If you want to learn Mandarin (or Pu3 Tong1 Hua4), you have to master the four tones of the language. However, one pinyin usually represents many Chinese characters. For example, han4 can depict the Chinese characters for sweet, drought, brave, Chinese, etc. Thus you have to learn the Chinese characters to master the language.
Chinese is not alphabetic so the writing is not related to its phonetics. We don't translate the Western alphabet since the letters have no meaning, and we do use the letters in writings, especially in scientific writings.
There are many styles of Chinese writing. Some of the styles are more ancient than others. In general, there are large differences among the styles, even though some of the styles are quite close. Different styles of Chinese characters are naturally used according to the purposes of the writing, such as Xiaozhuan mainly used for seal carving now. Besides the different styles, there are also two forms of Chinese characters, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified is the standard writing form employed in the mainland of China and the traditional form is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are total 2,235 simplified characters contained in the 'Simplified Character Table' published in 1964 by the Chinese government, so the majority of the Chinese characters are the same in the two forms, though the count of commonly-used Chinese characters is only about 3,500.
English
Glad to meet you
Goodbye
Good day
Good evening
Good luck
Good morning
Good night
Hope to see you again next time
How are you?
How old are you?
I think you are cute
kind regards
See you again.
See you tomorrow
Sorry
Welcome to my home
What is your name?
Wish you a happy journey
Wish you a safe journey back home
You look pretty young
You look very young
Your hair style looks beauiful
Wish you good fortune
What time is it?
Excuse me
small
Sure
Thank you
Thank you very much
What can I do for you?
You are welcome
USA
China
American
Chinese
Crazy
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
twenty
thirty
one hundred
one hundred and twenty-three
one thousand
one million
ten thousand
Chinese Pronunciation
Jian Dao Ni Hen Gao Xing
Zai Jian
Wu An
Wan Shang Hao
Zhu Ni Hao Yun
Zao Chen Hao
Wan An
Xi Wang Xia Ci Zai Jian Dao Ni
Ni Hao
Ni De Nian Ling You Duo Da?
Wo Jue De Ni Hen Ke Ai.
Wen Hao
Zai Jian
Ming Tian Jian
Dui Bu Qi
Huan Ying Dao Wo Jia Zuo Ke
Ni Gui Xing?
Zhu Ni Luu Tu Yu Kuai
Zhu Ni Yi Lu Ping An
Ni Kan Shang Qu Mei Na Me Da
Ni De Yang Zi Hen Nian Qing
Ni De Fa Xing Hen Piao Liang
Gong Xi Fa Cai
Ji Dian Le?
Lao Jia
Xiao Hao
Bu Xie
Xie Xie
Duo Xie
Ni Mai Shen Me?
Bu Ke Qi
Mei Guo
Zhong Guo
Mei Guo Ren
Zhong Guo Ren
Feng Zi
Yi
Er
San
Si
Wu
Liu
Qi
Ba
Jiu
Shi
Shi Yi
Shi Er
Er Shi
San Shi
Yi Bai
Yi Bai Er Shi San
Yi Qian
Yi Bai Wan
Yi Wan
Chinese Pronunications
Tones
Every syllable in Chinese has a definite tone and therefore tones are as important as vowels and consonants in forming syllables. The difference in tone is the deciding factor in the meaning of words. For example, mai with falling tone means "sell" and mai with falling rising tone means "buy".
There are four basictones in Mandarin Chinese:
1st tone (high level): is spoken high and the voice neither rises or falls.
2nd tone (rising): starts with the voice lower but ends up as high as in the 1st tone.
3rd tone (falling-rising): starts with the voice lower than the 2nd tone, dips and then rises in a rather drawn-out way.
4th tone (falling): the voice falls from high to low.
Every syllable is pronounced on one of these four tones, except when it is unstressed. In this case, the tone distinctions disappear, and the unstressed syllables is pronounced light and short. In speech, when two 3rd tones follow one another, the first automatically becomes 2nd tone.
Vowels
Letter Approximate pronunciation
a like a in car (but with no r-sound)
e like e in her (but with no r-sound)
i (1) like ee in bee
(2) after c,s,z,ch,sh,zh,r like e in her (with no r-sound)
o like aw in saw
u like oo in spoon
u..similar to french u in "lune", round lips and say ee.
