Chinese Studio 汉语对话 Lesson 004 Revision of Greetings

Yajie: Perfect Chinese your way, in only five minutes a day. Welcome to Chinese Studio, a brand new Chinese learning program on China Radio International. I’m Yajie.
Cam: Hello, every one. I’m Cam. Time goes so quickly that we are already at the end of the week. It’s time for us to review what we’ve learnt this week.

Yajie: Well. During the week we learnt two very important sentence structures. One is declarative sentence，and another is interrogative sentence. These two are very basic. Let’s first go over some sentences.

***************Sentences in the Week
During this week we learnt very basic and useful sentences for greetings. Let’s go over them now!
你好, Cam。你好, Pingping。您好，Director. 你好。Hi, Cam, 你好吗？我很好。谢谢！
***************

Yajie: 是(shì) means am, is and are in English. There is no need to consider the time change or the form of the subject, no matter single or plural, or the first person or the second person.  是(shì) is the symbol of a declarative sentence.

Cam: 我的名字是Yuanbao。(Wǒ de míngzi shì Yuanbao.) My Chinese name is Yuanbao. 我是加拿大人。(Wǒ shì Jiānádà rén.) I’m Canadian.

(converstation：你好, Cam。你好, Pingping。您好，Director. 你好。Hi, Cam, 你好吗？我很好。谢谢！)

***************Sentences in the Week
Also we learnt how to introduce one to another and deliver the self- introduction.
您好，请问，您叫什么名字？/您好。您是哪国人？我是英国人。
你好，我叫Yuanbao，是加拿大人。我来自加拿大(Wǒ láizì Jiānádà).
你好, 我是Yajie，中国人。这位是Lucy, 来自美国。
***************

Yajie: 吗 indicates that the sentence belongs to the interrogative kind. Like a question mark, 吗 is a sign of a question in Chinese. You can say你好吗？to your friends and other people you’ve already known.

Cam: 你好吗 ( nǐ hǎo ma?), Yajie？

Yajie: 我很好。谢谢。Now comes the sentence您叫什么名字？What’s your name? 什么, what. 名字, name. 您好，您叫什么名字？

Cam: 我的名字是Yuanbao。您叫什么名字？

Yajie:　我的名字是Yajie。

Yajie:　The last important sentence we’d like to stress is您是哪国人？您是哪国人？Literally, you are from which country? 哪, where. 哪. it’s the third tone. 国is short for the word 国家, country. 人, person.　您是哪国人？

Cam:　 我是加拿大人(Wǒ shì Jiānádà rén). 我来自加拿大(Wǒ láizì Jiānádà). 您是哪国人？

Yajie:　我是中国人。我, I. 是, am. 中国人, Zhōngguó rén, Chinese.

Cam: I’ve learnt the two basic sentence structures. It’s a good beginning. Well, every one, remember? You can win a CRI gift by answering the question. This time please make a sentence with 是. It must be easy for you. And hope you are lucky to win a CRI gift.

Yajie: You can e-mail us at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. Or you can log on our website, that’s en.chinabroadcast.cn. Click learn Chinese, where you can enjoy other free Chinese-learning programs, and raise your questions online. There we have prestigious experts ready to answer your questions.

Cam: Well, class is over. This is Cam saying goodbye.

Yajie: This is Yajie, Hope you join us tomorrow on China Radio International. See you then.