Text / 课文

Pronunciation

Pinyin Pronunciation Basics

Pronunciation of Initials

Pronunciation of Finals

Possible Initial-Final Combinations

Using Tones

Introduction / 介绍

Expectations

This textbook will assume that you have no prior knowledge of Chinese, but are willing to take Chinese as a serious subject of study. Each lesson contains a combination of new vocabulary and new grammar in a gradual progression, building on previous lessons.

Each lesson should be appropriate for a week's worth of daily classes, so don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of material per lesson. Learning to write new characters will probably be your limiting factor, so split up the memorization of a lesson's characters over two or three days and use class time mostly for work on grammar and speaking skills.

Lesson Sections

Each lesson consists of five parts:

1. Dialogue. Here you will see a dialogue carried out by two or more people. All texts are given in 4 versions: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin, and an English translation.
2. Grammar. This section breaks down all of the new sentence structures introduced in the dialogue and shows example sentences to reinforce them.
3. Vocabulary. New vocabulary for the lesson, with translation and pronunciation. Every newly introduced character will be linked to an image or animation showing its stroke order.
4. Examples. A page of sentences and phrases giving more examples based on the lesson material.
5. Exercises. Questions and activities to test comprehension of the material. May be used as homework or as review material for lesson exams.

Speaking and Pronunciation

• Learn pinyin. Not only is it used throughout this book to explain proper pronunciation, it is needed to look up words in dictionaries and to type in Chinese.
• Pay attention to the tones. Since there are so few syllables in Chinese, there are many homonyms, making attention to tones very important. Learning to write the pinyin with correct tones at the same time as you learn the characters will improve your pronunciation and your listening comprehension.
• Read the text aloud. Speaking (and hearing yourself speak) will help reinforce the text in your memory. Exaggerating the tones can help you remember them. In Chinese, character (something that when writing takes a space unit), word (which may include some characters or a single character), and sentence may be different from English. When speaking Chinese, the pronunciation of each character should be a single unit.
• Find a language partner. There may be a Chinese language club in a nearby city or university. There are also free websites on the Internet that can help you set up a language exchange using Skype or other VoIP programs. Two examples are The Mixxer and E-Tandem.
• Use a Text To Speech (TTS) service. In other words, have a computer read the text for you. Free examples include Google Translate and imtranslator.net. Google Translate can not only read the text (the volume icon, not available for large texts) but also give you the pinyin (the A with the umlaut), and, of course, translate.
• Consume Chinese media. Immersing yourself in Chinese after learning the basics will make learning easier. To learn pronunciation, make the voices of native speakers your constant companions, and after finishing this book, continue to immerse yourself—you will have learned enough to take on Chinese "in the wild". A wide variety of multimedia options exist for exposing your ears to native Chinese speakers. Two of the best sites for easy listening materials are Popup Chinese and ChineseClass101.com. Advanced learners can listen to broadcasts of Xinhua, China's official news network, or visit Youku, a Chinese incarnation of YouTube (YouTube is blocked in China, and Facebook as well, for that matter). Download as much audio as you can from these sites to your MP3 player and start listening. You can listen to Chinese whenever you're in the car, commuting, or doing mechanical tasks. Note that, since Internet Explorer 6 is still a popular browser in China, Chinese websites may seem a bit quirky, and video streaming services may not work at all on modern browsers.

Reading and Writing

• Practice writing—a lot. When you study, write a character at least ten times, and more if you have trouble remembering it. You can find special grid paper for writing practice with Chinese characters on the Internet; for example, PDF sheets are available on UVM's web site, and a practice sheet generator is available at www.chinesetools.eu (or original site, French). The output is set up as a grid, so that a typical printer can print 11 characters with 8 boxes each per page in portrait mode, giving each character one row, or 5 characters with 17 boxes each, and so on. In landscape mode, a printer can print 8 characters with 11 boxes each per page, or 4 characters with 23 boxes each giving each character two lines. Remember to quiz yourself periodically to test your memory and to find which characters you need to practice more. As you write, think of the sound and meaning of the character, or say it out loud. Check out the East Asian Calligraphy wikibook for more help with Chinese writing. Learn the correct stroke order initially and write carefully, looking at the printed character each time before copying. Actually writing is important to establish a 'motor memory' of each character, which will allow your writing to flow more easily.

• Use a flashcard program. Many people who use flash cards memorize information, but there's often much time wasted reviewing what they already know well, or in relearning what they forgot. The free programs Anki and Mnemosyne, can optimize your review schedule using their algorithms. They can also use audio for pronunciation help and 3-sided cards to study reading, writing, and translation separately. You can download free cardsets, export your own, or write them yourself to fully customize your character selection.

A radical highlighted in 3 characters

• Look for radicals. Radicals are components of Chinese characters that you will see repeated over and over again. Learning the meaning of radicals will help you to see the connections between similar categories of words. Many characters are comprised of radical-phonetic pairings, where the radical is the "root" that hints at the meaning of the word, while another part of the character hints at the sound of the word. Learning to spot radicals is also useful since they can be used when looking up words when you don't know the pinyin in Chinese dictionaries.

• Buy a dictionary. They're useful for looking up new words or just browsing. Beginner's dictionaries have larger fonts, usage examples, and Pinyin pronunciation, all of which are sometimes missing in comprehensive dictionaries. CC-CEDICT is a thorough Chinese-English dictionary available under Creative Commons. KTdict C-E is a free iOS app that uses CEDICT. A good physical dictionary that provides many example sentences and phrases is The Starter Oxford Chinese Dictionary (Simplified characters only). A good online dictionary would be nciku. It is searchable by pinyin, characters, and sketches, via a drawing panel. It not only contains definitions, also shows the stroke order of a character, and gives examples of its use.

Other Chinese phonetic systems and the IPA

If you are familiar with Zhuyin (bopomofo), Tongyong Pinyin or the Wade–Giles system, Wikipedia has an equivalency chart comparing these different systems.

Hanyu Pinyin is the most common Romanization system for Chinese, which will be used for the rest of the text. However, you may find Tongyong Pinyin and Zhuyin helpful in understanding the correct pronunciation, as they treat exceptions to initial-final combinations in syllables differently (see below).

The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is a standard set of symbols that can be used to write any sound from any human language. The sounds of pinyin will be listed on the next pages in IPA.

Tone

The tone is represented by a tone mark placed on top of the syllable. There are four tone marks: ˉ, ˊ, ˇ and ˋ. The two dots on ü (an umlaut like in German) do not have to do with the tone. So if you see ǖ, ǘ, ǚ or ǜ, the symbol above the dots represents the tone.

Initial

The initial is:

• in the beginning of a syllable
• a consonant (excluding y or w in some cases)
• usually one letter, except for zh, ch and sh

Final

The final is the letter(s) after a syllable's initial, excluding the tone mark. A final:

• begins with a vowel
• ends with a vowel, n, ng or r
• a syllable can have 1 or 2 finals

For example: in duàn, d is the initial, uan is the final, and ˋ is the tone.

Exceptions

Some syllables have no initial or no final. In Pinyin, this is shown as follows:

• For syllables with no final:
  • an unpronounced i is added to the end of the syllable, and the tone is marked above the i: ch → chi.
  • Occurs only with the following initials:zh, ch, sh, r, z, c and s.
• For syllables with no initial:
  • if the final begins with an i, it is replaced with a y: iao → yao (pronounced like English "yow")
  • if the final begins with an u, it is replaced with a w: uan → wan (pronounced like English "won/one")
  • if the final begins with an ü, it is replaced with yu: üan → yuan
  • Exceptions:
    • i alone is replaced by yi, in is replaced by yin, ing is replaced by ying;
      • iu is replaced by you.
    • u alone is replaced by wu;
      • ui is replaced by wei, un is replaced by wen, ueng is replaced by weng.

When ü is combined with initials j, q, x and y, the umlaut is removed, like jū.

If those look intimidating, don't sweat it. The next few pages will give some actual examples of how initials and finals are pronounced and put together, and how to use tones.

Remember, since hearing is very important for learning to speak, audio samples and the voices of native speakers should be your constant companions.

Pronunciation of initials

Pronunciation of finals

Rolled finals

Rolled finals (儿化音) are a phenomenon in spoken Mandarin. People from northern China like to roll their tongue when saying specific words (usually nouns and verbs) in daily dialogues. On the other hand, people from southern China rarely do that. Foreign Chinese learners are not quite suggested to learn so, as this is sometimes considered as a northern China accent instead of standard Mandarin. This table's purpose is to enable Chinese learners to recognize and understand them when hearing somebody using them.

Using Tones

Relative pitch changes of the four tones

Every syllable in Chinese has a clearly defined pitch of voice associated with it to distinguish characters with the same sound from each other. Unfortunately, there is no indication of the tone given when reading a character, so the tones for words must be individually memorized. To help with this, pinyin uses four easily-remembered diacritical marks to tell you what the tones of words are. The diagram to the right shows the pitch changes of the four tones on a five-bar scale going from lowest (1), to highest (5), while the five tone marks are:

1. First tone (阴平)( ˉ ), high level.
2. Second tone (阳平)(ˊ), middle rising.
3. Third tone (上声)( ˇ ), low dipping.
4. Fourth tone (去声)(ˋ), high falling.
5. Tone of unstressed syllable (轻声)(without any marks), low level.

Tone marks are always placed over vowels, never consonants. If there is more than one vowel in the syllable, the mark placement is determined by three simple rules.

1. If there is an a or an e, the tone goes on the a or the e. No pinyin syllable contains both an a and an e.
2. In the ou combination, the o takes the tone mark.
3. In all other cases, the final vowel gets the tone mark.

Pronouncing the tones

Each bar of this musical staff represents the relative pitch changes when saying tones 1, 2, 3 and 4

Say the first tone as if you were singing a high note. The second tone is pronounced like a question in English, with your pitch rising at the end of the syllable. Third tones are low and extended, noticeably longer than the other tones because of the dip. The fourth tone is said abruptly and forcefully, like a curt command in English. The neutral tone's pitch depends on the tone that precedes it. It is described more fully below, but in general, they are pronounced quickly and softly. The classic example used to show the difference tones make is:

妈(mā) 麻(má) 马(mǎ) 骂(mà) 吗(·ma) (Being "mother", "hemp", "horse", "scold" and a question particle, respectively.)

The shape of the 3rd tone when before 1st, 2nd and 4th tones

In many cases, several characters can have exactly the same syllable and tone. For example, along with 马, the characters 码 and 蚂 are also pronounced exactly the same (mǎ). 马 can be used alone to mean the animal "horse." It can also be combined with other characters for new meanings. 马上mǎshàng-immediately; 马球mǎqiú-polo; 马路mǎlù-street; etc. Other characters with the same pronunciation will be used differently as well. 数码相机shùmǎ xiàngjī-digital camera; 蚂蚁mǎyǐ-ant; etc. Since these characters alone sound exactly the same in conversation, the only way to distinguish them is through context.

Test and Review

Mandarin One: Lesson One

Dialogues

Vocabulary

	Simplified	Traditional (if diff.)	Pīnyīn	Part of speech	English [‍m.‍]
1a.	你		nǐ	(pro)	you (singular, masculine)
1b.	妳	妳	nǐ	(pro)	you (singular, feminine), rarely used in the Mainland
2.	好		hǎo	(adj)	good
3.	们	們	men	(particle)	(noun plural marker)
4a.	你们	你們	nǐmen	(pro)	you all (plural, masculine)
4b.	妳们	妳們	nǐmen	(pro)	you all (plural, feminine)
5.	我		wǒ	(pro)	I, me
6.	我们	我們	wǒmen	(pro)	we, us
7.	他		tā	(pro)	he, him
8.	她		tā	(pro)	she, her
9.	他们	他們	tāmen	(pro)	they, them (masc.)
10.	她们	她們	tāmen	(pro)	they, them (fem.)
11.	叫		jiào	(v)	to be named, (lit.) to call
12.	什么	什麽	shénme	(pro)	what
13.	名字		míngzi	(n)	name
14.	是		shì	(v)	to be (am/is/are)
15.	谁	誰	shéi OR shuí	(pro)	who, whom
16.	国	國	guó	(n)	country
17.	人		rén	(n)	person [个  ‹gè› (個  )]
18.	也		yě	(adv)	also
19.	吗	嗎	ma	(part)	(question particle for yes or no questions)
20.	呢		ne	(part)	(question particle for known context)
21.	哪		nǎ OR něi	(pro)	what, which
22.	不		bù	(adv)	(negates verbs)

Proper Nouns

	Simplified	Traditional (if diff.)	Pīnyīn		English
1.	金妮		Jīnní		Ginny
2.	欧文	歐文	Ōuwén		Owen
3.	艾美		Àiměi		Amy
4.	东尼	東尼	Dōngní		Tony
5.	中国	中國	Zhōngguó		China
6.	美国	美國	Měiguó		United States
7.	英国	英國	Yīngguó		United Kingdom
8.	法国	法國	Fǎguó		France

Forming the nationality is usually as simple as adding on 人  ‹rén› (“person”) to the country name. 中国  ‹Zhōngguó› (“China”) becomes 中国人  ‹Zhōngguó rén› (“a person of Chinese nationality”), and so forth.

Grammar

Sentences using shì [是]

The equational verb 是  ‹shì› (“to be”) can be used as the English is or equals. 是  ‹shì› can only be used to equate combinations of nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns. In Chinese, 是  ‹shì› (“to be”) is not used with adjectives, as it is in English, as in, "He is cold."

S + 是 + O

1. 我是中国人。

Wǒ shì Zhōngguórén.

I am a Chinese person.

2. 她是金妮。

Tā shì Jīnní.

She is Ginny.

3. 她们是英国人。

Tāmen shì Yīngguórén.

They are English.

是  ‹shì› is negated when preceded by 不  ‹bù› (“not”). 不  ‹bù› is normally 4th tone, but changes to a 2nd tone when it precedes another 4th tone.

S + 不 + 是 + O

1. 他不是东尼。

Tā bú shì Dōngní.

He is not Tony.

2. 我不是美国人。

Wǒ bú shì Měiguórén.

I am not American.

---

The question particle 吗  ‹ma›

Adding the modal particle 吗  ‹ma› to the end of a sentence makes a statement into a question. There is no change in word order unlike in English.

The declarative example sentence in #1 is transformed into an interrogative in #2.

1. 她是金妮。

Tā shì Jīnní.

She is Ginny.

2. 她是金妮吗？

Tā shì Jīnní ma?

She is Ginny ?

---

The question particle 呢  ‹ne›

Using the ending modal particle 呢  ‹ne› makes a question when the context is already known, similar to saying "How about...?" in English. A common circumstance is when you wish to repeat a question that was just asked for another subject. Simply add 呢  ‹ne› to the end of the noun or pronoun to ask "How about this".

1. 我叫东尼, 你呢？

Wǒ jiào Dōngní, nǐ ne?

I'm called Tony. How about you?

2. 艾美是中国人, 他呢？

Àiměi shì Zhōngguórén, tā ne?

Amy is Chinese. How about him?

---

Question words

Question words like 哪  ‹nǎ› (“what”) and 谁  ‹shéi› (“who”) also make statements into questions without changing the order of the sentence. In Chinese, each question word appears where its answer would complete the surrounding sentence.

1. 他们是哪国人？

Tāmen shì nǎ guó rén?

What nationality are they? (literally, "They are what country person?")

2. 谁是美国人？

Shéi shì Měiguórén?

Who is American?'

3. 她是谁？

Tā shì shéi?

Who is she? (literally, "She is who?")

---

Dialogues

Dialogue 1

Dialogue 2

Vocabulary

Grammar

The De {的} particle

Example:

      她  的   名字   是   金妮。
       Tā de míngzi shì Jīnní.
      Her name is Ginny.

Example 她是一个美丽的姑娘

        Tā shì yīge měilì de gū’niang.
       She is a beautiful girl.

where "美丽" "beautiful" is an adjective, and

Example 研究是一个科学的过程

       Yánjīu shì yígè kēxué dè guòchéng
       Researching is a scientific process. 

and where "科学" is a noun in Chinese and is turned into adjective using "的".

The Le {了} / Liăo {了} particle

Perfective Aspect Particle

Example:

      他  走  了。
       Tā zŏu le.
      He has gone. 

※The "le" here is used to modify 走 (zŏu, to go) into an action which has already been completed.

Example:

      別   再   打扰  我  了! 
      別   再   打擾  我  了! 
      Bié zài dărăo wŏ le! 
      Do not bother me again!

※In this instance, le is used in conjunction with bié ("do not") to form an imperative. Note: most imperatives are not formed using this construction.

Example:

      我  实在    吃  不  了   了。
      我  實在    吃  不  了   了。 
       Wŏ shízài chī bù liăo le. 
      I cannot possibly eat any more.

At first glance, this sentence may seem a bit daunting as it includes two instances of the le particle, paired side-by-side. However, the first le is understood to be liăo given its placement (bù + le is a nonsensical pairing). Therefore, liăo serves to indicate the capability of eating any further and le emphasizes this assertion.

The Zhe [着] particle showing continuation

1. 他睡着觉时有人敲门。

Tā shuìzhe jiào shí yǒurén qiāomén

While he was sleeping, someone knocked on the door.

For this sentence, you can take out "着" and say "他睡觉时有人敲门。" as "时" means "while" here.

The Zháo [着] particle indicating accomplishment

1. 我终于把东西买着了!

 (我終於把東西買著了!) 

Wŏ zhōngyú bă dōngxī măi zháo le.

I've finally been able to buy this item!

And another word, dào [到], can be seen as a substitution for 着, in most cases they are interchangeable.

2. 他在行窃时被当场抓到。

Tā zài xíng qìe shí beì dāng chǎng zhuā dào.

He was(is) caught in the act of stealing.

The 把 + N + V + 着(到)了 construction is particularly useful and should be studied.

The De [得] particle indicating degree

1. 我说得很好.

Wŏ shuō de hěn hăo.

I speak very well.

This construct often requires a context to gain its full meaning.

If you wish to speak more specifically about an action, the two constructs below demonstrate the use of 得 with a direct object.

2. 我说中文说得很好.

Wŏ shuō zhōngwén shuō de hěn hăo.

I speak Chinese very well.

Note the dual-use of the verb.

3. 中文我说得很好.

Zhōngwén wŏ shuō de hěn hăo.

I speak Chinese very well.

This construct emphasizes the object (here being "Chinese").

4. 我中文说得很好.

Wŏ zhōngwén shuō de hěn hăo.

I speak Chinese very well.

This expression is the simplification of the 2nd expression by eliminating the 1st verb. This form is even more frequently used than the 2nd expression above.

Vocabulary

Basic Word Order

Comparisons Using bǐ [比]

她比我忙。

Tā bǐ wǒ máng.

She is busier than I am.

东尼也比我忙很多。

東尼也比我忙很多。

Dōngní yě bǐ wǒ máng hěn duō.

Tony is also a lot busier than I am.

Notes

Text

Vocabulary

Measure Words/量词(liàngcí)

1. 这本书里没有一个汉字。

Zhè bĕn shū lǐ méi yŏu yí gè Hànzì.

This book doesn’t contain one Chinese character.

2. 那间宿舍有六十个学生。

Nà jiān sùshè yŏu liùshí ge xuésheng.

That dorm has sixty students.

The phrase 一朵花 (yī duǒ huā) means "one flower," but how would you say "a pile of flowers?" It's simple: just change the classifier. The phrase 一堆花 (yī duī huā) means "a pile of flowers." You could also say 一把花 (yī bǎ huā; a handful of flowers), 一桶花 (yī tǒng huā; a bucket of flowers), or 一种花 (yī zhǒng huā; a kind of flower). You can see that measure words act as adjectives.

In Chinese, like in English, you can omit the noun if it's already known, leaving only the classifier. 你看到那种（花）吗？ (Nǐ kàn dào nà zhǒng (huā) ma?) means "Did you see that kind (of flower)?" You can see that measure words also act as nouns.

Measure words are also used with demonstrative pronouns (this, that). For example, 这朵花 means "this flower," and 那朵花 means "that flower."

You might also encounter something like this: 书架上有书本。 (Shūjià shàng yǒu shūběn.) which means "The bookshelf has books on it." Note that the classifier is after the noun. This signifies multiple books where the exact number is not important, here translated "books." The sentence 书架上有书。, means the same as above, but is without the classifier.

Vocabulary

• 嗨 / hài = hi
• 去 / qù = go
• 哪儿 （哪兒） / nǎr = where
• 图书馆 (圖書館） / túshūguǎn = library
• 再见 （再見 / zàijiàn = bye, goodbye (literally: see you again)

Text 1

You can check out the translations here.

Text 2

Vocabulary

Grammar

Exercise

1. Replace the underline words, and practice.
   1. 史密斯是美国人。
      • 英国人
      • 法国人
   2. 这不是杂志。
      • 书
      • 笔记本*
      • 铅笔
2. Replace the underline words, and then answer the questions with both positive answers and negative answers.
   • Example:
   • 史密斯是法国人吗？
     • 是，史密斯是法国人。
     • 不，史密斯不是法国人。
   1. 那是杂志吗？
      • 钢笔
      • 铅笔
      • 报纸*
   2. 王明是学生吗？
      • 律师
      • 老师*
      • 作家*
3. Translate the following English into Chinese.
   1. Wang Ming is not a teacher. Wang Ming is a student. Wang Ming is a Chinese. Wang Ming is not an American.
      • Answer(答):Wang Ming不是老師。Wang Ming是學生。Wang Ming是中國人。Wang Ming不是美國人。
   2. Smith is a lawyer. Smith is not a writer. Smith is an American. Smith is not a French.
      • Answer(答):Smith是律師。Smith不是作家。Smith是美國人。Smith不是法國人。
   3. This is Smith's book. That is Wang Ming's pen.
      • Answer(答):這是Smith的書。那是Wang Ming的筆。

Further reading

Read the following article, and then answer the questions in Chinese.

你好(nǐhǎo, hello)，我(wǒ, I)是王明。我是学生，我是中国人。这是史密斯。史密斯是我的¹ 朋友，史密斯是律师。那是史密斯的妻子(qīzi, wife)，安娜(Ana)。安娜是我的英语(yīngyǔ, English language)老师。

1."我　的" means "my", we will discuss this in the next lesson.

Questions:

1. Who is "I"?
2. What does Smith do?
3. Who is Ana?
4. What does Ana do?

Useful phrases

Translation for the text

Dialogues

You can check out the translation here

Vocabulary

Grammar

Translation of the text

Dialogues

Grammar

Chinese Characters

English

China, offically called the People's Republic of China(PRC), is a country in which 56 different peoples inhabit, located in East Asia. It has beautiful views, a long history, and diverse culture. The people living there welcome you and their wonderful language is waiting for your exploration.

Vocabulary

• 共和国 /gòng hé guó/ republic
• 东亚 /dōng yà/ East Asia
• 秀丽 /xiù lì/ beautiful, pretty
• 悠久/ yōu jiǔ/ so long
• 多元 /duō yuán/ diverse
• 好客/hào kè/ welcome to
• 探索/ tàn suǒ/ n. exploration verb. explore

Note

1 "她" is the feminine third person singular pronoun ("she/her") and is used to represent a female person. Here, it is used as to represent a nation. This “她” could be used to represent nation, natural elements, the planet etc.

Appendices / 附录

Chinese languages

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Lesson1

Hello

• 你好。 nǐ hǎo; The standard "hello" greeting. Literally means "you good."
• 您好。 nín hǎo; The same "hello" greeting as above, except that 您 (nín), like in many European languages, is the polite form of "you", used when addressing elders, or teachers etc.
• 你好吗？　你好嗎？ nǐ hǎo ma?; More often used following a greeting than not, however, this can be used as a "How are you?.
• 您好吗？　您好嗎？ nín hǎo ma?; The same as the "nǐ hǎo ma?" above, again, except that this is used as a more polite form.
• 你怎么样？你怎麼樣？ nǐ zěnmeyàng?; "What's up?", "How are you doing?"
• 幸会　幸會 xìnghuì! "Nice to meet you!" Used for the first meeting.
• 久仰 jiǔyǎng; An extremely polite greeting that is not commonly used between friends, but rather between professionals meeting for the first time.
• 久闻大名　久聞大名 jiǔwéndàmíng; This greeting should be reserved for use towards those whom you have extreme respect for, and is used for the first meeting. Literal translation: "Your name is famous" / "I have heard much about you".
• 久仰大名 jiǔyǎngdàmíng; The same as above one.

Good morning

• 早 zǎo; Also good morning.
• 早安 zǎo'ān; Seldom used in the Mainland.
• 早上好 zǎoshàng hǎo.

Good afternoon

• 午安 wǔ'ān; note: seldom used in the Mainland. Mostly used in the Republic of China and the rest of the Chinese speaking world.
• 下午好 xìawǔ hǎo! Seldom used in the Republic of China and in the Chinese speaking world.

Good evening / Good night

• 晚安 wǎn'an; Literally "Peace at night", Good night.
• 晚上好 wǎnshang hǎo; Good evening!

Good-bye

• 再见　再見 zàijian; Literally "See you again".
• 明天见　明天見 míngtian jiàn; Literally "See you tomorrow".
• 拜拜 bāibāi/báibái; From English "Bye-Bye". Widely used in Hong Kong, Taiwan (ROC) and most urbanised parts of mainland China. 掰掰 (báibái) is the variant character form that is gaining popularity in ROC.
• 回头见　回頭見 huítóujiàn: roughly equivalent to "see you soon", used in northern China.
• 再会 再會 zàihuì: Literally "[we'll] hello again". Usually used in Shanghai or other parts of China, and sometimes used at the end of TV programs.

Chinese New Year Greetings

• Xīnnián kuàilè 新年快乐　新年快樂 Happy New Year
• gōngxǐ fācái 恭喜发财　恭喜發財 gongxi facai

^ Chinese ^ | <<Pronunciation of Finals | Possible Initial-Final Combinations | Using Tones>>

Table of Possible Combinations of Chinese Initials and Finals

The table below shows all possible combinations of initials and finals in Pinyin (not including -r modified syllables). It also does not reflect the use of tones. Some combinations may only be valid with the use of one tone, while others may be valid with multiple tones.