5 Tips to Make Your Chinese More Authentic

Hey all! Let me share with you 5 really easy to implement tips that can make your Chinese sound much more ‘Chinese’ and less ‘English’. Here we go!

1. Greetings

When you greet somebody in Chinese, the most natural order is to first say the person’s name and then to add the greeting AFTERWARDS. For example:

阿姨，你好！

老师，您好！

Unfortunately, this ordering happens to be the exact opposite to the most natural-sounding English order. We tend to say things like ‘Hey, John!’, ‘Hi, Dan!’, ‘What up, dude?’. You’ve probably never thought about it, but if you flip the order, it sounds really jarring. ‘John, hey!’, for instance, sounds really awkward to most English speakers. It’s similar in Chinese, only the ‘weird’ order in English is the ‘okay’ one in Chinese and vice-versa. So, if the next time you’re speaking Chinese you say 你好，老师, you’ll sound kind of like you are translating from English into Chinese, word-by-word. So, make sure you flip this round hereon – it’s name THEN greeting!

2. ‘How are you?’

Irrespective of how long you’ve been learning Chinese, I’d bet my right hand (actually, no, my left hand…I’m right-handed) that you’ve never once heard any Chinese person say ‘你好吗？’ Funnily enough, this phrase only really exists in Chinese at all because of the fact that English-speakers have been learning Chinese and there is a gap in the Chinese lexicon where English speakers would want to know how to say ‘Hi, how are you?’. As a result, the phrase ‘你好吗？’ was born out of the need for something to teach all those 外国人 who want something ‘familiar’ and ‘English-like’ to say when they meet some. However, NO-ONE uses it (except 外国人, of course). So, what can you say instead, you’re probably wondering?

The Chinese nearly always use some very ‘in context’ way to find out how somebody’s doing. They ask if they’ve eaten, where they’re off to, if they’ve just finished class, if they’re heading home etc. This can be hard for English speakers to get used to, but next time you happen to overhear some Chinese speakers who have just bumped into someone they know, you’ll hear phrases like:

你吃了吗？

你上课了？

下课了吗?

上哪儿了？

你下班了？

你回家了？

你回来了？

The other option available is to use 好久没见 – which is where the English phrase long time no see comes from. However, you have to be quick as whoever says it first is let off the hook for finding conversational ‘filler’ and the other person now has the responsibility to say fairly awkward phrases like ‘是呀’, ‘嗯’ and the like, and then find another way to continue the conversation (possibly using one of the phrases in the list above).

And before you say your first phrase, when you want to express joy at bumping into a particular person, you can say a big, loud and enthusiastic 诶~ Eiiii! To be honest, I haven’t really heard too many Chinese friends greet each other with 你好. Something more like 诶~, 是你呀！ Hey, it’s you! seems to be more common. Or if you keep bumping into the same person, you can say something like 我们又巧遇了 ‘We’ve coincidentally met again!’

So, next time you greet your Chinese friend, know what to say 😉

3. Time Adverb Placement

When you learnt where to put time words like 今天、明天 etc. in a sentence, you probably learnt that you can put these sorts of time adverbs in one of two places:

(i)  at the very start of the sentence, before the subject

e.g. 下个星期，我要去北京了。

(ii) after the subject and before the verb

e.g. 我下个星期要去北京了。

In my experience, nearly every single student of Chinese opts to make (i) their default, the reason being that it is the word order most similar to English. Consider: 明天我上汉语课。 vs 我明天上汉语课。 vs ‘Tomorrow, I have Chinese class’.

Actually, the ‘safe’ word order in Chinese is (ii), with the time word placed before the verb, and (i) is only natural in certain contexts – in other contexts, it can sound quite awkward and sometimes, even just plain wrong. So when CAN you put the time word at the front? Well, usually when you are making some sort of comparison to other possible times e.g.

A: 你哪天有空？明天行吗？

B: 明天，我要上汉语课，所以不行。

     ‘Tomorrow, I have Chinese class…(so it will have to be another day).’

You can also put the time word at the front of the sentence when you are relaying some sort of narrative or telling a story e.g. 昨天，我看到了一件特别奇怪的事情。有一个男的… ‘It was the day of yesterday and I saw something very strange. There was a man…’ [Okay, so I’m exaggerating the translation a bit, but you get the idea of the tone].

So, unless you have a reason not to, stick that time word AFTER the subject & BEFORE the verb.

4. 2 Types of Chinese Adjectives

For some bizarre reason that I am yet to understand, you can hardly find any source for learning Chinese that tells you that Chinese in fact has 2 types of adjectives – scalar adjectives and absolute adjectives.

Scalar adjectives are those where you can have different degrees of that adjective e.g. 热 hot, 冷 cold, 开心 happy, 难过 sad, 高 tall etc., because we can say, for example, 很热 very hot, 有点热 a little hot, 挺热的 quite hot, 热极了 extremely hot etc. Fittingly, these adjectives must be used with a degree marker of some sort (unless a comparative sense is intended), the most neutral of which is 很 (the need for a degree marker is why 很 doesn’t really mean very unless given obvious emphasis). Also, if you recall, these sorts of adjectives should not be used with the verb 是 to be, which is unlike what we do in English, where we do use the verb ‘to be’ e.g. ‘The weather IS a little hot today’.

Absolute adjectives, on the other hand, are ‘either / or’ adjectives – you either are them or you aren’t. Such adjectives include 对 correct – at a basic level, something can either be correct or wrong, not ‘slightly correct’ or ‘very correct’ etc.英文 English (as in ‘an English gentleman’, rather than the noun in ‘I am studying English’), possessives like 你的 yours and basic uses of colour words (though these can be extended in more complex Chinese to have degrees e.g. 很红 very red) are also examples of absolute adjectives.

The issue and what makes students often confused is that these absolute adjectives in fact use a DIFFERENT structure to scalar adjectives. Whereas the scalar adjectives have a degree word and no 是, the absolute adjectives use the pattern是 + adjective + 的. That’s why you have to say 这是对的 and 这本书是英文的, rather than 这个对 / 这个很对 or这本书英文 / 这本书很英文. Let’s summarise the 2 adjective patterns:

            SCALAR ADJECTIVES                       subject + 很 / degree marker + adjective

            ABSOLUTE ADJECTIVES       subject + 是 + adjective + 的

So, let’s see if you get the concept – which of the following adjectives are scalar and which are absolute? Let me know what you think in the comments section!

中文, 有用, 对, 可爱, 高兴, 有意思, 多, 男, 女

5. Yes & No

Our final tip for this post is about one of the most basic parts of a language – how to say yes and no. Many students who learn Chinese have a tendency to stick too much to the ‘English way’ of saying yes and no, and so almost exclusively respond to yes-or-no questions with generic responses like 是的、不是、对 and 不对. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using these phrases sometimes, as they are commonly used. However, ONLY using these phrases to respond to questions misses the point that the default way to answer a question in Chinese is TO USE THE VERB OF THE QUESTION YOU ARE BEING ASKED. That means that if someone asks if you like something with 你喜不喜欢喝茶?, you should reply ‘喜欢’ to mean yes or ‘不喜欢’ to mean no. Likewise, if they ask you whether or not you speak Chinese with a question like 你会讲中文吗？, the reply should usually be either ‘会’ for yes or ‘不会’ for ‘no’.

Alrighty, that’s 5 tips for now. There’s more coming soon!

下次见！