Chinese —the mysterious, intriguing, alluring, visually "rocket-science" level and somewhat intimidating language. If in English we say "It's all Greek to me" referring to all things challenging and hard to wrap our heads around, in Russian it is always described as Chinese. I mean, have you seen those symbols and are you aware how many of them there are in the language? Just a thought of it makes you feel like giving up.
But whichever your personal perception of Chinese, it is hard not to get curious about it. At least a smidge? And this is when you learn things like saying "Hello" in Mandarin, which is the most common dialect used in China. Only... turns out, it is not precisely what a textbook teaches you to say...
And whether or not you're going to use it, Chinese "Hello" opens the world into the language and culture by showing us its diversity and its peculiarities, like tones and written characters.
You probably heard it already: "Hello" in Chinese is 你好 (Nǐ hǎo). It is spelled like this: 你好 —in hanzi (the word that literally means "chinese characters") and pronounced Nǐ hǎo to put it in Pinyin (we'll get to what Pinyin is soon enough), where 你 (Nǐ ) means "you" and 好 (hǎo) means "good"/"well". So you are literally saying "You good" or "You well" as a greeting.
Similar expressions to greet several people will be 你们好 (Nǐmen hǎo) —"Hello everyone!"— or 大家好 (Dàjiā hǎo).
BUT. The thing often omitted is that this greeting sounds more like "Nice to meet you" to a local ear which means it will work with strangers, people you see for the first time, but not with your friends. Otherwise, they'll think you consider them as if foreign to you.
What else can one learn about Chinese just by looking at Nǐ hǎo? See those "birdie" signs over the vowels? Those show tones —different pitches. In the Mandarin dialect of Chinese (standart dialect for China) there are 4 tones, besides the neutral one. Each and every Chinese word is pronounced using one of these tones. Make a different tone, and you get another meaning or nonsense. So you can imagine that if you, like me, are not used to such a thing like a tone in a language, it will take time to get used to it and get it right.
Tones are shown in Pinyin by diacritic marks over vowels with intonation following the shape of the marks or by a correspondent number after a syllable:
- First tone: mā or ma1 —same level and high pitch (as if you saw something mesmerizing).
- Second tone: má or ma2 —rising, start from a lower pitch and end at a slightly higher pitch, it sounds kind of like you are asking a question.
- Third tone: mǎ or ma3 —falling rising, start at a neutral tone then dip to a lower pitch before ending at a higher pitch, low and croaky like a zombie.
- Fourth tone: ma4 or mà —falling, start the syllable at a slightly higher than neutral pitch then go quickly and strongly downwards, like you are making a short assured statement.
Don't worry, it is all doable, everyone can make these tones. Your two main tasks here are: 1) to get used to talk using tones for every (every!) syllable and 2) to recognize the tones when they are pronounced which you can start practicing here.
Words written in hanzi, the Chinese characters, have no indications of tones —those marks only apply to Pinyin (pīnyīn), literally "spelled sounds". The name itself explains its function: to represent Mandarin pronunciation. It is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in Roman letters, just like rōmaji for Japanese.
Interestingly enough, it is not just for non-Chinese speakers. Nowadays, pīnyīn is used by Chinese speakers as well especially when typing on electronic devices.
See, hanzi have actually two ways of spelling: Traditional (i.e. more complicated one, used more in Taiwan) and Simplified (the one people in China use more often). Say, standard phrase for "How are you?" made up by already known to you Chinese Hello and a question particle ma will look slightly different depending on the spelling way you encounter:
— Traditional: 你好嗎? (Nǐ hǎo mā?)
— Simplified: 你好吗? (Nǐ hǎo mā?)
Let's look back at the hanzi for Nǐ hǎo: 你好. Each character is made up by smaller blocks called radicals. This is the case for all the words in Chinese. There are 214 radicals in total.
For Nǐ hǎo we have:
- Nǐ 你 ("you") consisting of radicals for "person" 亻(modified form of 人) and "small" 小.
An earlier form of "you" in Chinese was a pictograph of a balanced load. This symbol was later simplified to the character 尔. Eventually, the person radical was added. In its current form, 你 could be read as "someone who is balanced, or of equal stature" – meaning "you."
- hǎo 好 ("good") has radicals for "woman" 女 and "baby, child" 子: when a woman is holding her baby, they are safe and good.
Most hanzi are presented this way: a component that indicates meaning + a component that gives a clue about the pronunciation of the character. The pronunciation clue component usually does not have exactly the same pronunciation as the whole character, or it may be the same sound but pronounced in a different tone. Hence, it is only a "clue". It doesn’t reflect the pronunciation precisely. So there is no way to know exactly how a Chinese character is pronounced just by looking at it.
So what's the deal with Nǐ hǎo? If it is not the one to use on daily basis with the people I know, what are my real options to say "Hello" in Chinese? Listen up!
- For starters, use 嗨 (hāi) or 嘿 (hēi) with friends followed by their name. Yes, just like the English ones. "嗨 Billy!" Gotta warn you, though, only use it when talking to young people, or people of your age.
- Now take a good (hǎo :)) look at this second part of 你好 (Nǐ hǎo). This is another option. If you bump into someone of importance to you, older family member, or somebody you want to show respect, use their status, title or even their nickname with hǎo: "Granny hǎo", "Boss hǎo", "Driver hǎo", etc.
- Hǎo is also used with time of the day to convey "Hello":
- 早上好 — Zǎo shang hǎo — "Good morning!" (from 6a.m. to 9a.m.), or simply "早" (Zǎo!)
- 上午好 — Shàng wǔ hǎo — also "Good morning!" (from 9a.m. to 12 p.m.)
- 下午好 — Xià wǔ hǎo — "Good afternoon!"
- 晚上好 — Wǎn shàng hǎo — "Good evening!" or "Good night!" (as in "Hello", NOT as in "Sleep well")
I bet now you can recognize the Chinese character for hǎo —好— everywhere.
And then there comes unexpected, but still commonly used, ways to say "Hello". The intention they bear is to ask something like "How are you?" but are used instead of hellos, meaning they are designed to greet. For example, this odd one, food-related: "Have you eaten?"
吃了吗? — Chī le ma?
or 吃饱了没？— Chī bǎo le méi?
To answer you are fine, you have to assure people you have eaten, so no worries: "吃了" — Chī le. Perhaps the origin story of this particular way of greeting comes from the lack of food in addition to the importance of food in China. In older days, people did not always have enough to eat, and asking whether you have had a meal yet is a good way to show that they care about your well-being.
Other "puzzling" greetings may be asking something like "Are you busy lately?" or "Where are you going?" But it is only puzzling the first time. You get used to the seeming quirkiness of Chinese quickly enough. If you are still curious to learn a tad more, here is the video for you (9:58):
Another specific thing Nǐ hǎo —你好— turns our attention to is the peculiarity of the tones when used one after another. There are couple of rules on how the tone changes when it stands in a certain position.
- When you have to say one third tone followed by another third tone out loud in consecutive fashion, the first one actually becomes a second tone.
- The negative prefix bù is usually spoken with a fourth (falling) tone. However, when it precedes a syllable with another fourth tone, it becomes a second (rising) tone instead, as in such words as búqù (won’t/didn’t/doesn’t go) and búyào (don’t/didn’t/won’t want).
Different tones, different spellings, thousands of hanzi and bizarre pinyin —one word Nǐ hǎo (你好) tells us an informative story about the Chinese language, and all this with not even being the one-and-only Hello word we could use in 100% of cases like the English Hello. Nǐ hǎo makes us realize how important it is to the Chinese people to know your age, your status or things like whether you've eaten or not.
If you're thinking about embarking on your own great adventure into the Chinese language, keep in mind —it is not going to be a simple one but it will be different, and eye-opening, and mind-boggling, and quite unusual. Especially if you let some of that rich culture in.
Let's get to know Chinese a little bit more in the next Episode. Until then...
拜拜啦! (Bài bài la) Bye bye!
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