Lesson Four: Eating

This lesson we will be studying eating. This is one of the most important things to learn when visiting a foreign country as everybody has to eat.

Well let us set the mood a little shall we, and bring Bob back to help us with a our conversation skills. Except today, he will be conversing with Jenny, it appears Steve was otherwise engaged...
Let's get started on the lesson now.

Bob: 你要吃嗎?  (Ni3 Yao4 Chi1 Ma5)
Jenny: 要。 (Yao4)

Not a very long conversation, however this is perfect in showing how to use two new words, and more importantly answering questions.

Now starting with just the new words introduced this lesson. From now on, I will be ignoring the old words we have already studied except when laying out a translation for the whole sentence.

We have the character "要" (Yao4) this is a very important character as it means "want to".
The other new character is "吃" (Chi1) which means to "Eat".
Now in examining the sentence Bob said "You want to eat?" You probably have already noticed Jenny's answer was just one character long. You notice she just said "want to", but did not say the word "I" as this can usually be excluded from the sentence when asked a question. This type of answer already implies that you are talking about yourself so it is irrelevant to point it out.

It is that time again and so for now I say 再見我的學生。