Lesson Two: Introductions (Part One)

Hello again everyone, I do hope you have all taken a chance to study the last lesson because it is time for lesson two! However, I do recommend you try to learn just one lesson a day, as this will allow it to soak in better for long term retention.

In this lesson we are going to learn an introduction sentence in Chinese that you could actually use in a real world situation. However, to make sure you absorbing everything I am breaking the example sentence down over a period of two lessons as there will be a lot of new characters for you to remember.

I will use the example of two friends who just bumped into eachother on the street and exchange greetings.

Bob: 你好嗎?    (Ni3 Hao3 Ma5)
Steve: 我很好，你呢?    (Wo3 Hen3 Hao3  Ni3 Ne5)
Bob: 我也很好，謝謝。    (Wo3 Ye3 Hen3 Hao3   Xie4 Xie5)

Well for just a simple hello it sure does seem like a mouthful doesn't it. Well don't worry about it you will get the hang of it in no time at all.

Let us begin with the first line from Bob, you shoud remember it from the last lesson.
"你好嗎?" The literal translation is "You good?" However to make it easier to remember your can just think of it as "Hello how are you?" If you have forgotten this sentence I recommend you go back and review lesson one again.

Now onto the next sentence. "我" This character is prounounced as (Wo3) it means "I" while the second character  "很" (Hen3) means "Very" and you should already know the word 好. So together it means "I Very Good" now onto the last part since you already know "你" let us move on to the character "呢" (Ne5) it is also a question character just like "嗎" so together they mean "And you?"

Now that is all for today, I know it is probably eating away at you to know the last sentence, but I think by splitting this into two lessons you will have more time to learn the prounciation and writing that much better.
Good luck and 再見 for now.