In this post we look at the three different ways of saying “can” in Chinese: , and . Let’s look at the difference: means “to be able to” and emphasises the ability or possibility of doing an action. means “to know how to” and emphasises something you have learned to do. means “to have permission …
How to say can in Chinese: 能 (néng), 会 (huì), 可以 (kěyǐ) Read More »
In this post we’ll look at different ways to say “good” and “bad” in Chinese with varying degrees of strength. At a basic level, every Chinese learner should first learn that means “good”, and means “not good”. List of ways to say good and bad in Chinese Below is a list of vocabulary for expressing …
In Chinese literally means “not bad”, however it has a more positive meaning than “not bad” in English and is closer in meaning “good”. Consider if someone were to ask you about a movie you watched, in English you might ask how was the movie? not bad Depending on your tone, responding with “not bad” …
There are a few words for receipts and invoices you should know in Chinese, the most common are: invoice receipt What’s the difference between a fapiao and a shouju? A is a tax invoice, you should ask for one of these when making a business related purchase or claiming a business expense. A is a …
Receipts and Invoices in Chinese: shouju and fapiao 收据 & 发票 Read More »
Some numbers are considered auspicious or inauspicious in Chinese and are important to know to avoid social taboos.
Unlike English, Chinese doesn’t modify words depending on the tense, instead time words are added to express whether an action is in the past, present or future. These time words are often adverbs but can phrases or nouns. In English you might say: Present I’m playing basketball Past I played basketball Notice how we modify …
Chinese Past, Present and Future Tense for beginners Read More »
You may have read some articles about a US professor being suspended for using the co-called “N-word” in Chinese, so what’s the fuss all about? What is the N-Word in Chinese? The N-word in Chinese is actually ， which is pronounced as either nàgè or nèige and literally means “that one”. is a common Chinese …
Modern Chinese does use punctuation and is remarkably similar to English.
Written Chinese doesn’t use spaces between words, but modern Chinese does use punctuation, so you can still tell where one sentence stops and the next starts. With Chinese words being multiple characters, a Chinese reader relies on experience to know where one word stops and the next start. Chinese Beginner books and learning material often …
In this post I explain in simple terms what a classifier, also called a “measure word”, is.
