Free Mandarin Lesson 3: How to say YES and NO, and Live Mandarin Sentences!

Mandarin Made Easy!

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Learn how to say NO, and to easily turn an affirmative statement into a negative one!

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• C.-Y.Chang

[seewhychang]

Another example is as follows:

A told B that s/he does not want eat anything as a way of protesting against something. B runs into C, and C asks B what A has decided to do. Then B may say

他 想要 不 吃饭 以 示 抗议

ta xiang3yao4 bu4 chi1fan4 yi3(以) shi4(示) kang4yi4（抗议)

So to a certain extent, "bu4 chi1fan4" in this sentence serves as an act or noun.

[seewhychang]

If A has clearly stated that s/he "did NOT want to buy a television" to B. When B runs into C on the street, for example, and C asks B about A's intention of whether A is going to buy a TV or not. B then can say that ta xiang3yao4 bu4 mai3 dian4shi4. In this case, " NOT WANTING SOMETHING" can be treated as a intentional noun following xiang3yao4.

It's yet another interesting nuance in Chinese. We will go into this grammatical idiosyncrasy in future.

[seewhychang]

ta1 bu4 xiang3yao4 mai3 dian4shi4 = He does not want to buy a television. (This is sort of iron-clad.)

However, when it comes to ta1 xiang3yao4 bu4 mai3 dian4shi4 does sound odd and potentially non-idiomatic. Having said that, this particular sentence can be used in a scenario as follows:

[seewhychang]

Hi AkihabaraAkira, good question; thanks!

Unfortunately, this is an exception. Bu4 不 is always pronounced at the 4th pitch when it is followed by whatever character pitched at the 1st, the 2nd and the 3rd, except the 4th. When bu4 不 is followed by a 4th-tone Chinese character, the 不 MUST be pronounced as bu2 with the 2nd tone!

CY

[seewhychang]

Hi AkihabaraAkira,

Yes, Pinyin is a romanization system of helping to decompose pronunciation of Chinese characters with English alphabet.

CY

[seewhychang]

wine 酒 jiu3

water 水 shui3

cigarettes 香烟 xiang1yan1 (香= smell/fragrance/incense; 烟=smoke)

[ZheZhir]

woo~ thankz~^^

btw u say xiang3yao4 right? but is it different if i just say xiang3?

[LearnChineseJapanese]

谢谢!

[colloredbrothers]

@seewhychang

You are the man, xie xie ni.

[sissy71195]

THank you so much for these videos! They are extremely helpful! 谢谢！

[imajorhavoc]

I wanted to learn manderin,instead i got some fagget claiming the color purple again.fuckin cocksuckin hollywood wannabe

[SuperJane99]

You are so great.

[TangaTronic]

You are so fabulous! These are very helpful.

[janeeyre1990]

@baumwi Pin yin is a romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese. It's just a way of writing Chinese using the English alphabet.