They are going back to China

他	们
tā	men
they

回	国
huí	guó
to return to one's home country

They are going back to China.

Character to pinyin converters

What's this called? zhe jiao shenme 这叫什么? http://www.pin1yin1.com/ You can paste in character text and get pinyin output like this:

这

zhè

this; these

叫

jiào

to shout; to call

什	么
shén	me
what?; who?

zhè shì shénme? What's this? and Measure Words

zhè shì shénme? zhè shì yī gèrén = What's this? This is a (Measure word) person.

When we use a noun we must first put a measure word in front of it. The most common measure word is:

gè

个

You can use this measure word for almost everything and people will understand you, but sometimes there are more specific measure words for different objects e.g. yī běn shū=a book.

There are different types of measure words:

1. Sometimes they indicate the shape of an object e.g. yī tiáo hé=a river. tiáo is a measure word for long snake-shaped things

2. Sometimes measure words indicate container volumes of things e.g. yī píng shuǐ=a bottle of water.

3. There are other measure words like bunch in English that indicate a quantity of something e.g. yī duī shū=a pile of books

You already know some Chinese!

Everybody's heard of fengshui but what does it mean? Well, feng is wind and shui is water. Easy, isn't it? Here are some other words which come from Chinese or are very similar in Chinese and English:

chá=char (tea)
májiàng=Mah Jong
mángguǒ=mango
pīngpāngqiú=ping pong/table tennis
tàijí=tai chi

For a full list of loan words in Chinese and English click:

English loan words in Chinese

Chinese loan words in English

The tones

You may have noticed "accent" marks over the top of the pronunciation of each word. These indicate the tone of the syllable. In mandarin Chinese there are 5 tones as follows:

ā á ǎ à a

First tone:

ā

Flat tone. Try saying "aaahhh" like you do when the doctor asks you to open your mouth wide and say "aaahhh". Now try saying "maaahhh" with them same tone.

Second tone:

á

Rising tone. This is like a surprised tone, as in "Oh?"

Third tone:

ǎ

Falling-rising tone. Try saying "ah" while nodding your head.

Fourth tone:

à

Falling tone. This tone is quite emphatic and you can imagine stamping your foot while you say "ah!" Try to attack this tone and then let it tail off.

Fifth tone:

a

Otherwise known as zero tone. This is a neutral tone and is pronounced without any special emphasis.

Chinese is as easy as one, two, three!

Chinese characters can be easy if you know how to study them and where to start. So let's begin with something really easy - one, two, three.

一二三 yī èr sān

Some of the other numbers are easy to learn too:

七 qī is like an upside down number seven and that's what it means.
八 bā means eight.

The numbers one to ten are as follows， but don't worry if some of them look difficult I'm going to help you.
一二三四五六七八九十 yī èr sān sì wǔ liù qī bā jiǔ shí

yī
一 one

èr

二 two

sān

三 three

sì

四 four - draw a square and then draw a pair of curtains inside it. Actually the curtains are another character 儿 ér

wǔ

五 five - you may notice that this character is made up of 5 straight lines and it looks a bit like the number 5.

liù

六 six

qī

七 seven

bā

八 eight - easy

jiǔ
九 nine. Actually there's another character 力 lì which means strength. Compare these two characters and what do you notice? The hook on the right is reflected, right?

shí

十 ten - easy, it's just a cross.

Look at the characters for six and eight. What do you notice? The bottom part of the character for six 六 liù is the same as the character for eight 八 bā. The top part of the character 亠is a radical and occurs in numerous characters so it's well worth learning that too.