6.9 Buses
6.10 Taxis
7. A Place to Stay
7.1 General
7.2 Hotels/hostels/budget accommodations
7.3 Requests
7.4 Complaints
7.5 Departure
8. Money Matters
8.1 Banks
8.2 Settling the bill
9. Mail, Phone and Internet
9.1 Mail
9.2 Telephone
9.3 Internet/email
10. Shopping
10.1 Shopping conversations
10.2 Food
10.3 Clothing and shoes
10.4 At the hairdresser
11. Tourist Activities
11.1 Sightseeing
11.2 Places of interest
11.3 Going out
11.4 Nightlife
11.5 Cultural performance
11.6 Booking tickets
12. Sports Activities
12.1 Sporting questions
12.2 By the waterfront
12.3 In the snow
13. Health Matters
13.1 Calling a doctor
13.2 What's wrong?
13.3 The consultation
13.4 Medications and prescriptions
13.5 At the dentist
14. Emergencies
14.1 Asking for help
14.2 Lost items
14.3 Accidents
14.4 Theft
14.5 Missing person
14.6 The police
15. English-Chinese Word List
Introduction
• Welcome to the Tuttle Essential Language series, covering all of the most popular world languages. These books are basic guides in communicating in the language. They’re concise, accessible and easy to understand, and you’ll find them indispensable on your trip abroad to get you where you want to go, pay the right prices and do everything you’ve been planning to do.
Each guide is divided into 15 themed sections and starts with a pronunciation table which explains the phonetic pronunciation to all the words and sentences you’ll need to know, and a basic grammar guide which will help you construct basic sentences in your chosen language. At the end of this book is an extensive English–Chinese word list.
Throughout the book you’ll come across boxes with a beside them. These are designed to help you if you can’t understand what your listener is saying to you. Hand the book over to them and encourage them to point to the appropriate answer to the question you are asking.
Other boxes in the book—this time without the symbol— give listings of themed words with their English translations.
For extra clarity, we have put all phonetic pronunciations of the foreign language terms in bold.
This book covers all subjects you are likely to come across during the course of a visit, from reserving a room for the night to ordering food and drink at a restaurant and what to do if your car breaks down or you lose your money. With over 2,000 commonly used words and essential sentences at your fingertips you can rest assured that you will be able to get by in all situations, so let Essential Chinese become your passport to learning to speak with confidence!
Pronunciation guide
The imitated pronunciation should be read as if it were English, bearing in mind the following main points:
Consonants
b, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w, y as in English
| c | like English ts in its |
| j | like English j in jeep |
| q | like English ch in cheer, with a strong puff of air |
| r | like English ur in leisure, with the tongue rolled back |
| x | like English see (whole word) |
| z | like English ds in kids |
| ch | like English ch in church, with the tongue rolled back and a strong puff of air |
| sh | like English sh in she, with the tongue rolled back |
| zh | like English j, with the tongue rolled back |
Vowels
| a | like English a in far |
| e | like English u in fur |
| i | like English ee in fee |
| o | like English o in for |
| u | like English ue in sue |
| ü | like French u |
Tones
A tone is a variation in pitch by which a syllable can be pronounced. In Chinese, a variation of pitch or tone changes the meaning of the word. There are four tones each marked by a diacritic. In addition there is a neutral tone which does not carry any tone marks. Below is a tone chart which describes tones using the 5-degree notation. It divides the range of pitches from lowest (1) to highest (5). Note that the neutral tone is not shown on the chart as it is affected by the tone that precedes it.
The first tone is a high-level tone represented by a level tone mark
The second tone is a high-rising tone represented by a rising tone mark
The third tone is a low-dipping tone represented by a dish-like tone mark
The fourth tone is a high-falling tone represented by a falling tone mark
The neutral tone is pronounced light and soft in comparison to other tones and is not marked by any tone mark. A syllable is said to take on a neutral tone when it forms part of a word or is placed in various parts of a sentence.
Basic grammar
Compared to many European languages, Chinese grammar is quite simple. There are no verb conjugations, no plurals, no gender in nouns, no articles and the sentence order is intuitive to English speakers. This section presents Chinese grammar in parts of speech familiar to English speakers.
1 Word order
More often than not, Chinese word order is the same as in English:
| subject – verb – object | ||
| Wǒ xué Hànyǔ | 我﹣学﹣汉语 | I study Chinese |
2 Nouns and pronouns
Mandarin words are mostly made up of two characters and nouns