To ask “Are you busy?” in Mandarin say nǐ máng ma? (你忙吗?). Máng uses the second rising tone. Say this sentence over and over as it’s great practice for this tricky tone. Say it as if somebody were asking you a question and you respond saying, “yeah?” with your voice going up.
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In Chinese the way of asking strangers and people of authority “What is your name?” is very different from Western languages. The question “What is your last name?” literally translates to “Your honourable name”. Say “
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The personal pronouns in Mandarin Chinese are surprising simple, much easier than in Western languages such as English, French or Spanish. In Chinese there is no difference between I and me, she and her, we and us, or they and them.
We’ve already learned I (
To say “we or us” simply stick the word “men” on the end of men (我们). “Men” uses the neutral tone so there is no inflection in the voice. The character men (们) literally means many people. To say “you plural” (vous in French, ustedes in Spanish or ya’ll down south) say
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In Mandarin Chinese to say “no, not, don’t” there is simply one word or character:
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In this video I teach how to say beautiful in Mandarin Chinese. I was standing in front of a beautiful reflection in Wulai Village near Taipei and my bus was about to leave without me! To say beautiful in Mandarin say
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Today I took a trip to Wulai Village which the home of the Atayal aboriginal tribe. The village is in the mountains and is famous for its hot springs and mountain hikes. You can get there by taking the MRT transit system to Xindian station then transferring to a bus. The entire trip is only about 40 minutes from the city center!
While many people believe that Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language in the world the basic sentence structure and grammar is actually EASY and follows a similar pattern to English: Subject, Verb, Object. There are some tricky sentence structures that come up but generally grammar is one of the easiest parts of learning the Chinese language.
Our example of a Subject, Verb, Object sentence is: I eat food,
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In this video I teach how to say good-bye in Chinese. First say
Actually in my video below I forgot to mention that Chinese also often just say, “bye-bye!”. So when you’re not in a formal situation it is OK to say bye-bye!
I’m interested in hearing your feedback on my YouTube channel and this blog site. Please let me know how I can improve my teaching style. Also, I’m totally new to making videos and website design so I’d love any feedback/advice I can get on these areas! Thanks and 谢谢! -David 
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After yesterday’s slight mishap with lighting I am really excited to finally share my trip to the top of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. The building took five years to construct and was completed in 2004. According to the architects the building is meant to resemble a bamboo stalk. Taipei 101 has 101 floors and stands 509 metres (1,671 ft) tall. It will lose its ranking as tallest building in the world when the Burj Dubai is completed in 2009.
To say Taipei 101 we first need to learn how to pronounce Taipei with the right tones. To say Taipei say
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Today was a rough day! I went out and shot a really fun video at a famous Taipei landmark and when I got home I realized that the lighting was too dark! If anybody has good advice on what kinds of cameras to buy and how to shoot good YouTube videos in poorly lit places please let me know. Thanks!
To say, “How are you?” in Mandarin take the characters for hello, Ma
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