A US west coast newspaper sports reporter wrote he survived the Beijing Olympics Games by remembering the following:

"Knee How" -- How do you do

"Shay Shay" -- Thank you

"Sigh Jen" -- Goodbye

Did Jennifer sigh when he asked about her knee when she was sashaying around the Bird Nest?!

The point is, please learn spoken chinese a better way. A co-worker and a neighbor downloaded the $25 Pimsleur system onto their Blackberries, listen and repeat daily whenever they can. Now 2 months later, they are practicing what they learned on me, certainly doesn't sound like "Knee How"!

Could you please clear up how Ni hao sounds different that knee how?

We heard three different versions of Xie Xie. Different people told us to say it differently. We left not knowing how to say it.

1. http://www.chinesepod.com

Lessons for complete starters and all other levels, playable through the webpage or downloadable as mp3 files. Free.

2. http://www.nciku.com

Type 'ni hao' in the search box.

Click search.

Click 'listen' in the results, and hear first a female then a male voice say the greeting as it should be said.

Peter N-H

Thank you, Peter.

ana -- It's not possible to clear up how Knee How sounds different than Ni Hao. Please understand chinese characters have 4 tones, you have to master the tones to achieve proper pronunciation. Simple example:

Ma 1st tone means Mother
2nd tone means Hemp
3rd tone means Horse
4th tone means Cuss

And there is a light tone too at the end of a question. like Ni Hao Ma? -- How are you?

See what damage can be done with the wrong tone?

colduphere -- Who are these people? Their mandarin must not be proper mandarin, mine is almost proper except being picked on by Beijing-born chinese.

I can't speak Mandarin, but like most people tried to manage a few phrases and even (occasionally) get the tones right. I can only wonder at the puzzlement "shay shay" would have engendered - unless I really missed something it seems to bear no discernible resemblance to the pronunciation of "xie xie".

Shanghainese - We brought over written instructions from a travel website (sorry can't remember which one) that did indeed say "shay, shay". We did not hear this pronunciation very often.

We heard "she, she" in some places. For example in Xi'an airport the public address announcer said "she she" very clearly.

Our hotel owner in Beijing said it was two syllables, more like "she-a, she-a" with both the "e" and the "a" being soft. This is close to how it sounds in the website PeterN_H provided. This is also the way I mumbled it for three weeks and usually got some reaction.

Keep repeating after the tutorial till you feel fairly comfortable. It's ok to fumble but no mumbling please, chinese people will think you are whispering in a different language!

Well Shanghianese, can you correctly pronounce the difference between duck and duct? You see in proper English, you MUST be ever so careful or you could order a duct and get a duck, and that would be sooo careless. This is as silly as being offended by applying lipstick on a pig.

There was nothing remotely silly about Shanghainese's remarks on tones, which introduce an idea entirely alien to English speakers, namely that most syllables in a sentence must carry a tone if meaning is to conveyed. Perhaps this has not been understood.

Needless to say, context is your friend in using terms for 'Hello', and 'Thank you', and anything in the general area of the correct sound is likely to be understood.

But you don't have to progress much further into areas of communication likely to be important to visitors before tones become essential--giving the names of destinations, or asking for something in a shop, for instance. Which is why those beginning to study the language spend their first weeks practically singing it--exaggerating the tones--so that later on when they have some fluency in the language they clearly express the tones on elements essential to the sentence's overall meaning. This is also why it's best for the casual visitor to get key destinations or shopping items written down for them, unless they've a good ear for tone right from the start.

The duck/duct difference is something Mandarin also has, as all languages do. For instance 'beng', 'peng', and 'pen' all have multiple non-overlapping meanings, varying according to tone (and some with different meanings and different written forms for the same sound-tone combination).

In Mandarin if you use the wrong tone you may well be misunderstood, but in general toneless Mandarin conveys no meaning whatsoever. And there's nothing silly about that information at all.

I had pretty much mastered Ni Hao, if I do say so myself LOL, and was proudly greeting everyone within earshot all over China. Including in Zhongdian/Shangri La. Until a Tibetan I met taught me the greeting, "Tashi Dele" - Hello in Tibetan. I wish I had learned it ahead of time, that simple phrase ended up playing a positive role in my experience there.

Back to 'xie xie' - my understanding is that in Pinyin (the Roman alphabet rendering of Mandarin) 'e' generally represents a sound rhyming with 'fur' (without the 'r'). Thus, 'xie xie' would sound a little like 'sh'yer sh'yer'. But I've also heard the 'e' pronounced something like an Italian 'e' (i.e. rhyming with 'yeah').

I think the first 'xie' has the fourth (falling) tone and the second is neutral (?) To my ear the 'x' sound is actually somewhere between our 's' and 'sh'.

Going back to 'sigh jen' - again it sounds like whoever came up with that has a tin ear. That would be 'zai jian' - which sounds to me like 'dz'igh j'yen'.

Back to the experts....

As in every other language, in transliterated Mandarin some vowels have different values according to circumstances, although with far few variations than English.

The sound represented by 'x' is not found in English (or any other European language, come to that), and bears no resemblance to 's' either in how it sounds, or in how it is made. But it's one of those things that simply can't be learned from a written description alone.

To hear how the 'x' and 'e' (actually, the 'ie' combination) in 'xiexie' actually should sound, go to:

http://www.nciku.com/search/all/xiexie

and click the relevant button. The first syllable is indeed in the falling tone, and the second syllable is indeed toneless, as the tone-marked pinyin alongside the button also tells you.

There's a thoughtful non-academic discussion of some of the bad pronunciation advice out there, similar to that quoted in the original post, at:

http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/02/

The two pages that follow give a guide to the pronunciation of some of Mandarin's less familiar consonants, complete with diagrams of where your tongue should be.

A native speaker who has also trained as a teacher can actually help you master these fairly quickly. And while unfamiliar elements such as certain sounds and the matter of tones may seem complicated, in fact Chinese is far easier in terms of grammar and ease of use even than Spanish, and not a hard language to learn. If you're looking for something to do in evening classes, Mandarin's not a bad choice, and not least because unlike other European languages, it comes with a completely different world picture built-in, which is interesting in its own right.

Peter N-H

Ah, and I would add that one should not get hung up on the tones when learning to speak Chinese.

Just repeat repeat and repeat what you hear. Get a good tape and keep repeating the basic phrases over and over again, just as in learning any other language.

One can get so hung up on hitting the right tone that one's tongue gets frozen. Just be aware that besides consonants and vowels there's another dimension. Understanding that there are four tones in Mandarin helps to make one aware of the nuances of how to pronounce the language, but don't get hung up on making sure you've hit the correct tone.

Besides the tones can often shift when in combination in phrases.

And even more, there are lots of dialects, so what is current in Xian is not current in Beijing.

Otherwise, Chinese is a breeze to learn - no endless tenses to learn, no genders - I get so hung up with European languages - now is a chair a "he" or a "she"? Sentence order is as in English: subject-verb-object.

Don't try to learn the written language - except maybe for one, two, three. Unless you plan to specialize in Chinese.

Have fun! That's the key!

I'm sorry, but I think the original post was a bit rude. If I'm traveling to China and actually take the time to learn some phrases how is that a bad thing? I hope people aren't saying to not speak it all if you can't speak "properly" (although there seems to be some debate on what pronounciation is proper).

The average traveler is not going to have the time to buy CDs or DVDs to learn a language before they go on vacation. If they do make the effort to learn some phrases they are at least making an effort to make things go smoother. I can't see how any local would be offended or somehow put off if some foreign tourist said "knee how" or "shay shay" to them. It is obvious what is being said given the context. Do you really think someone is going to confuse "sigh jen" with something offensive when the speaker obviously does not know the language?

It would be extremely difficult to learn all of the tones in Mandarin solely from a book. Since, I assume, a lot of people would learn their Mandarin from their guidebook or a phrasebook I don't see how they can be expected to master all of the tones without ever hearing them.

I don't understand how someone can criticize others for trying to bridge the gap by learning some phrases. On the other hand, I have always has people appreciate it when I use words or phrases in their language. I don't come off as some arrogant tourist that way.

I'm sure the OP can stand up for himself, but I always think it helps to read the postings before replying.

The OP is clearly encouraging people who travel to China to try speaking a little Mandarin, and not discouraging them in any way, but says quite clearly that there are better ways to learn pronunciation than the nonsense provided in the article he read (and many other pronunciation guides--see the link I already provided).

It has already been said that context is your friend for simple greetings, but does that mean that you shouldn't try to say the greeting as accurately as you can manage? Nobody has suggested that anyone would be offended, but don't we all usually try to get it right when we study a few basics before travel so that we'll be understood?

It isn't a matter of buying a CD (and nobody mentioned DVDs), as has already been pointed out. You can easily hear the pronunciation of simple phrases for free on-line, and that information was also provided with the aim of encouraging people who are wondering how things should be said (because they couldn't work it out from a phrase book) to find out. Presumably they are wondering because they want to get it right.

> It would be extremely difficult to learn all of the tones in Mandarin solely from a book. Since, I assume, a lot of people would learn their Mandarin from their guidebook or a phrasebook I don't see how they can be expected to master all of the tones without ever hearing them.

This is entirely circular. The language isn't going to stop being tonal because just someone can't be bothered with that and wants to learn the language solely from a book. And the OP and subsequent posts made precisely the point that the tones can't be mastered without hearing them, but that it's very easy on-line to get access to correct pronunciation of simple phrase, and to download entirely free introductory lessons in mp3 format even if only out of curiosity.

You cannot learn Mandarin just from a book and if you can't be bothered to listen a little to free resources then you're not as interested as you say you are in communicating, and that's neither the fault of the books nor the language itself. 'Please', 'thank you', 'hello', and 'good-bye', can be found on-line, listened to and practised in just a few minutes. There's no need to sound like a native speaker, but this is the best way to get as close as you're going to get.

It's just a matter of fact that phrase books are of no use by themselves once you venture beyond the simplest situations where context means meaning transparent--something they oddly neglect to mention. Without tones you cannot convey meaning effectively, and despite all the diagrams you learn tones by hearing others say them. The usefulness of the books is in enabling the reader to identify a string of Chinese characters to *show* to someone in order to make a request. The better ones offer panels of possible responses that can be pointed to in reply.

So, if the original and subsequent postings are read again it will be seen that no one has criticized anyone for trying to learn some phrases, but instead actually encouraged people to do so, while suggesting ways in which this can better be done. Chinese really isn't as hard as it looks.

Even for those who just want to attempt a few simple greetings and expressions of thanks, learning a few characters can be rewarding. This isn't hard either, and for those who want to go a bit further it's essential, helping to fix pronunciation in the mind (tone and sound) and overcome the fact that the same sound can mean many different things. Written Mandarin is a far more effective communication tool than spoken Mandarin.

For the casual visitor it can be fun and even useful to be able to tell 男 on male lavatory doors from 女 on female ones; 入口 on exit signs; 上 for stairs going up, the entrance doors on buses, and 下 for ways downward, the doors to use to get off. Even with only a handful of characters learned, suddenly these seem to jump out from signs and visitors get the pleasure of suddenly recognising that 上 , which also means 'on' appears in Shanghai, 上海, 'on the sea'), for instance.

For those who want to go a little further, especially independent travellers, clearly knowing a few characters for hotel, restaurant, and different kinds of shop can add to the pleasure of travel, help them get around more easily, and save a little time.

Peter N-H

Peter and others -- Thanks very much for all your help.

To all you naysayers, please read the original post "The point is, please learn spoken chinese a better way", no less , no more.

Granted, english is not my 1st language, yet I am multi-lingual and mutli-culture. Years of teaching both English and Chinese as a 2nd language, and writing textbooks, have given me a keen insight into human nature. You can put listick on a pig, you can't put words in my mouth or twist them around in your head and spit them out.

I do not have the time nor enjoy the pleasure of bending down to continue with this unhelpful communication, let's move on, ladies and gentlemen.

Mandarin was not a breeze for me to learn, for sure.

I took 8 painful years of Mandarin classes before I finally decided to give up.

I haven't tried seriously learning another language, so it may be that I'm not good with languages in general.

Bravo, Peter! Great post!

Grumbo: the problem with any of the tonal languages - which range from Thai to Tibetan to Chinese and cover a great part of this earth, the problem is that they can't be learnt from a book the way a lot of other languages can be learnt.

That's because meaning is associated with a tone. If you hit the wrong tone, you've conveyed the wrong message.


We used to have a Vice President in our company and he was transferred to Hong Kong. On one of my trips to HK during one memorable luncheon, with a table full of people from various departments, he wanted to say that the food was "delicious", however, his tones were off and he said that he was "longing for color" - which has huge sexual overtones. First there was a shocked silence as there were a number of young ladies present and then almost everyone burst out laughing. The VP, luckily for everyone, had a great sense of humor and was soon laughing along with everyone else.


I do believe the OP, who is one of the nicest people you could meet, was trying to be helpful and to point out the perils of not paying attention to one's tones when speaking a tonal language.

Shang,

You have stated it better than any of us ever could.......I never doubt what you say!

Aloha!