汉语入门课 Chinese for Beginners - Lesson 1

一、礼貌用语 Greetings & Basic Dialog

Chinese Characters Chinese Pinyin Pronunciation** English Translation

你好。 nǐ hǎo* ni hao Hi!

你好吗？ nǐ hǎo mā ni hao ma How are you?

我很好。 wǒ hěn hǎo wo hən hao I’m very good.

你叫什么名字？ nǐ jiào shěn me míng zì ni chiao shən mə ming tsɨ What’s your name?

我叫...... wǒ jiào... wo chiao I’m (called)...

谢谢。 xiè xie hsie hsie Thank you.

不客气。 bú kè qì bu kə chhi You’re welcome.

再见！ zài jiàn tsai chien Bye!

* When there are two consecutive 3rd tone, the first one becomes a 2nd tone.
** With reference to International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA) and Wade-Giles system

二、发音 Pronunciation

1）元音（单韵母） Vowels (Single Vowels)*

Pinyin IPA / Wade-Giles English approximation Example

a a father mā

o ɔ war / water wǒ

e ə/ê about kè

i yi see nǐ

u wu shoe bú

ü yü (German) ü / (French) tu nǚ

* When single vowels are combined, the pronunciations can change. This will be covered in the
future.

2）声调 Tones

Tone number 1 2 3 4
Description high rising low (dipping) falling neutral

ā ǎ
Pinyin diacritic
á à a
˥ ˧˥ ˨˩ / ˩ / ˩˧ ˥˩
Tone letter

三、汉字 Characters

女 (nǚ) -
female 好(hǎo) -
good
子 (zǐ) -son
不 (bú/bù) -no