(It’s raining heavily)
Wow it’s raining cats and dogs now!
No one says that anymore…
But I learned it from my textbook!
哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace!
As a language learner myself,
sometimes I would learn something from textbooks
that in real life native speakers “seldom” use,
yep, this is another word I learned from my English class.
So today, let’s learn about Chinese phrases like this
and what alternatives you can use.
The first one is 你好嗎 (How are you)
You might have learned this phrase as a greeting in Chinese,
however, as a native Chinese speaker myself,
I’ve never heard people greeting others using this phrase.
So instead of saying 你好嗎,
you can greet people in the following ways:
你好
Hello
If you’d like to be more polite,
you can say “您好”
您 is the polite form of “你 you”
And if you’d like to greet a group of people,
you can say “大家好！”
To greet a teacher, you can say “老師好！”
The structure is Subject + 好 (good).
Just like in English, in Chinese, you can say “嗨 hi”,
“哈囉 Hello” or “嘿 Hey” to greet your friends.
If you want to greet a friend who you haven’t seen for a while,
you can say “好久不見 long time no see”.
When we’re answering the phone,
we often use “喂 wéi” as “Hello” to greet people.
The second overused phrase is 很有意思 (very interesting)
When you want to say 很有意思,
here are some other alternatives you can use.
If you want to describe something that is fun,
you can use the adjectives “有趣” or “好玩”
For example,
To describe a performance or show as wonderful,
you can use “精彩”.
For instance,
If you want to express that something is appealing or attractive,
you can say “吸引人”,
or even more advance, “引人入勝”,
but it’s more often used in writing.
For example,
The next phrase is 馬馬虎虎.
This one is very interesting,
because the English translation of 馬馬虎虎 is “so so”,
which is what I learned from my English textbook,
but I rarely hear native English speakers use it.
馬馬虎虎 is the same,
I haven’t heard it used as “so so” that much,
however, it can be used to
describe someone does something casually and carelessly
or someone who is careless. For example,
So to express that something is just alright,
it’s neither very good nor very bad,
instead of saying 馬馬虎虎,
you can say “還可以”, “還好” or “一般”.
or you can say
The next phrase is 哪裡哪裡
You might have learned that this phrase can be used as a response
when someone gives you a compliment.
However, in real life,
I’ve never heard people responding to a compliment using this.
So when someone gives you a compliment, instead of saying 哪裡哪裡,
there are three common responses:
The first one is accepting the compliment by saying 謝謝 (thanks)
and we would usually add some comments after it. Like,
The second way is showing your surprise by saying 是嗎？(Is it?)
or 真的嗎？(Really?).
This indicates that you didn’t expect the compliment. For example,
The third way is also very common,
which is refusing to accept the compliment
by saying 沒有沒有 or 沒有啦 (More casual).
A lot of people use this way to show their modesty. For instance,
The final phrase for today is 再見
再見 means “goodbye”, but just like the English word “Goodbye”,
再見 is quite formal, it’s usually said to a person who you’re not close to.
If you want to say goodbye to your friends,
you can simply say “拜拜 bye bye”.
Here are some common phrases often used with 拜拜,
The first one is 我先走了
it means “I’m leaving” or “I’m heading out”.
It’s used when you’re leaving ahead of others.
When saying goodbye to others,
and you want to express that you’d like to meet or talk to the person again,
in that case, you can say…
下次再聊
Or 有空再約
For example,
If you’d like to learn more about these types of daily Chinese phrases,
remember to check out this video.
Alright, that’s all for today!
如果你喜歡今天的影片， 如果你喜欢今天的影片，
別忘記按讚、訂閱和分享哦！ 别忘记按赞、订阅和分享哦！
And also if you’d like to learn some daily Mandarin expressions,
check out my Instagram @gracemandarin
那我們就下次見囉！拜拜！ 那我们就下次见啰！拜拜！ (I’ll see you next time! Bye!)