Easy Chinese Phrase Book: Over 1500 Common Phrases For Everyday Use and Travel

By Lingo Mastery

What is the hardest challenge you’ve faced as a student of the Chinese language?

You can work hard on your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, but being able to communicate naturally isn’t easy.

In fact, the toughest part of learning Chinese is knowing how to speak like a native.

Most textbooks are made to teach you the traditional rules and structures of a language and are great for getting around the grammar and spelling questions you may have.

However, how many of them provide you the tools necessary to have a common conversation with a best friend or someone you’ve just met? Not many at all.

Language learners often complain about this – a lack of material that can help you familiarize yourself with the most common phrases used in everyday conversation and in native surroundings.

For this reason, we at Lingo Mastery have developed Easy Chinese Phrase Book: Over 1500 Common Phrases for Everyday Use and Travel for you, our favorite language-learner, so that you may find the best expressions for common usage in China and communicate with your Chinese friends, colleagues and client without any issue!

In this book:

- An introduction with a detailed guide on how to pronounce vowels and consonants (as well as their combinations) in the Chinese tongue.

- A list of over 1,500 common phrases in Chinese, with an accurate translation in English for your understanding.

- A phonetics pronunciation guide of each and every word in the phrases, included after every translation.

- Finally, a conclusion to make sure you’ve learned and supply you with a final list of tips.

Your days struggling with natural communication with natives is finally over. Our Easy Chinese Phrase Book is here.

It’s time for you to take your (Simplified) Chinese to the next level.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lingo Mastery
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 1951949218

Book preview

Introduction

If you have finally decided to visit one of the most beautiful countries in the world, then you can't help but consider the words, phrases, ways of saying that you will use in certain situations, which you must know before leaving.

Thanks to this book, we will see how to deal with many situations that can be simple, complicated, funny or even not funny at all. All those real situations that a tourist will experience when, for example, they want to drink a coffee, order a good dinner, or simply tell the waiter that what they have just eaten has not been to their liking.

Think of the souvenirs to bring back to a relative. Do you want to negotiate on the price or ask for a discount? It is certainly here that you will need to find the way to express yourself correctly.

Most of the time, a translation with the vocabulary at your fingertips is the best solution and therefore, why not take precautions and study a few phrases that could amaze your fellow travelers or your interlocutors?

Of course, there are some obstacles to overcome. Let's see for example what can create difficulties at a phonetic level in the Chinese language.

The Phonetic system for Chinese language is called Pin Yin.

Pin yin is used to write standard Mandarin Chinese using the Roman alphabet. The pinyin system can be divided into consonants and vowels. There are 23 consonants in Chinese Pinyin. Although they look very much like English Alphabet, but they are definitely pronounced differently.

b (bo); p (po); m(mo); f(fo)

d(de); t(te); n(ne); l(le); g(ge) k(ke) h(he)

j(ji); q(qi); x(xi); zh(zhi); ch(chi); sh(shi); r(ri); z(zi); c(ci); s(si); y(yi)

w(wu)

Chinese vowels are composed of simple and compound vowels. Simple vowels in Chinese are sounds that are spelled with just one vowel. There are 6 simple vowels.

a, o, e, i, u, ü

a — sounds like ah; used in 马 (mǎ) meaning horse

o — sounds like the o- in oh; used in 我 (wǒ) meaning I

e — sounds like uh but with a wider mouth; used in 和 (hé) meaning and

i — sounds like ee; used in 力 (lì) meaning power

u — sounds like oo; used in 服 (fú) meaning clothes

ü — sounds like u in June; used in 去 (qù)* meaning go

Compound vowels are made up of two or three vowels, and in some cases, they’re paired with special consonants. Adding an initial consonant to a compound vowel forms a one-syllable character.

Compound vowels can contain: Two simple vowels; Three simple vowels; One vowel + one special consonant (n); One vowel + two special consonants (ng); Two vowels + one special consonant; and, Two vowels + two special consonants

Simple and compound vowels form a group of sounds known as finals. There are a total of 33 finals. So for now, We’re just going to focus on the correct pinyin pronunciation first, and once you’ve nailed this part, you can start practicing the different tones.

Compound vowels starting with: a

ao → pronounce as ah + the o- in oh, or ow but with less emphasis on the -w sound.

For example: 猫  (māo, cat)

ai → pronounce as  ah + ee, or the word eye but less emphasis on the -ye sound

For example: 菜 (cài, vegetables)

an → pronounce as  ah + n

For example: 难  (nán, difficult)

ang → pronounce as  ah + ng

For example: 唱  (chàng, to sing)

Compound vowels starting with: o

ou → pronounce like the word oh or the letter o

For example: 狗 (gǒu, dog)

ong → pronounce like the o- in oh + ng

For example: 红 (hóng, red)

Compound vowels starting with e:

ei → pronounce like -ey in hey, or the letter a

For Example: 北 (běi, north)

en → pronounce like uh + n, or -un in bun

For example: 闻 (wén, to smell)

eng → pronounce like uh + ng, or -ung in hung

For example: 冷 (lěng, cold)

er → pronounce like uh + r, like the word are with a lighter r sound

er manifests on its own, with no initial consonant. For example: 二 (èr) which means two, and 耳 (ěr) which means ear.

Compound vowels starting with: i

These 9 compound vowels all begin with the ee sound:

ia → pronounce like ee + "ah

For example: 下 (xià, down)

ie → pronounce like ee + eh (not to be mistaken with the Canadian eh)

For example: 别 (bié, do not)

iu → pronounce like ee + the letter o

For example: 球 (qiú, ball)

iao → pronounce like ee + ow with less emphasis on the w

For Example: 跳 (tiào, to jump)

in → pronounce like ee + n

For example: 因 (yīn, because)

ing → pronounce like ee + ng

For example: 竟 (jìng, actually)

ian → pronounce like ee + ehn

For example: 年 (nián, year)

iang → pronounce like ee + ahng

For example: 两 (liǎng, two)

iong → pronounce like ee + ohng

For example: 穷 (qióng, poor)

You may notice that you combined the syllabic parts for most compound vowels with a y sound.

Now that’s have a look compound vowels starting with: u

Each make use of the w sound to create the diphthong:

ua → pronounce like oo + ah, or wah

For example: 瓜 (guā, melon)

uo → pronounce like oo + the o- in oh, or who- in whoa

For example: 火 (huǒ, fire)

ue → pronounce like u in June + eh,

For example: 月 (yuè, month or moon)

ui → pronounce like oo + -ey in hey, or the word way

For example: 腿 (tuǐ, leg)

uai → pronounce like oo + ah + ee, or the word why

For example: 快 (kuài, fast)

un → pronounce like oo + ehn, or wen

For example: 论 (lùn, theory)

uan → pronounce like oo + ahn, or wan

For example: 峦 (Luán, hill)

uang → pronounce like oo + ahng, or wahng

For example: 光 (guāng, light or luster)

Compound vowels starting with ü are:

üe

ün

üan

These compound vowels are actually not normally included in Chinese vowels because they’re pronounced the same as yue, yun and yuan, with ü being the same as yu.

Since they have the same pronunciation, the dots in the ü (aka umlaut) are dropped to avoid redundancy. Thus, even though 云 (yún), the character for cloud, could technically be written with the umlaut, it’s not necessary. The same goes for when these finals are combined with consonants j, q and x. For Example:

觉 (jué, to feel)

裙 (qún, skirt)

选 (xuǎn, to choose)

The only time the ü appears in text is when it must be distinguished from the u sound, like lü and lu, as well as nü and nu. For example:

绿 (lǜ , green)

路 (lù, road) 

女 (nǚ, girl)

怒 (nù, rage)

Apart from consonants and vowels, another very important element in Chinese is tones. Chinese is a tone language, and tones can affect the meaning of a character. Although Chinese speakers tend to be extremely forgiving of foreign accents. But without context, Chinese people won’t understand you if your tones are wrong. 

Tones in Mandarin are called 声调(shēngdiào).

Tones are a relatively fixed range of pitch change. Many people characterize Chinese as sounding sing-songy. If you’re one of them, that means you’re hearing tones! The pitch moving up and down from word to word is what gives English speakers this impression.

You can hear tones, so now you just have to figure out how to process them.

There are four Tones in Mandarin Chinese Tone system, along with a special Neutral Tone. Sometimes when speaking, Tones get modified or changed.

To pronouce the First Tone: It starts high and maintains high the whole process.

For example: ā (拉, lā, pull), Ō (锅, Guō, pot), ē (科, kē, section)

To pronouce the Second Tone: It starts medium high and goes up.

For example: á (拿, ná, bring) ; ó (活, huó, live) ; é (河, hé, river)

To pronouce the Third Tone: It starts medium high, dips down and then up again.

For example: ǎ (卡, kǎ, card) ; ǒ (我, wǒ, me) ; ě (渴, kě, thirsty)

The Fourth Tone: It starts high and then immediately goes down.

For example: à (辣, Là, spicy) ; ò ( 簸箕, Bò ji, dustpan); è (饿, è, hungry)

We also have a so called The Neutral Tone. Actually it is not a real tone, it is a way of pronunciation that is light, vague and short. For example the second word of this phrase 簸箕, Bò ji, ji, dustpan

The best time to practice tones is when you start learning the language. And then keep practicing until you get it right. Although it may feel like something disjointed to you, tone isn’t a separate feature of the language. It’s much harder to fix deeply ingrained habits than it is to make the right habits from the beginning.

You can practice hearing tones on one syllable, then in combination.

Tones sound different in context than they do in isolation. The most dramatic example of this is third tone. Chinese language textbooks universally teach you that third tone is falling-rising. But, actually, it’s only like that when you say it all by itself, or maybe at the end of a sentence. In normal speech, third tone is more often just a low tone.

This is why we strongly suggest you after trying to hear the four basic tones by themselves, as soon as possible, you should move on to working on hearing tones in longer combinations—at