TV shows

You should check out viki.com. It has tons of Chinese TV shows, and they usually have decent subtitles. If you want a higher number of shows, or better video quality, you can get a premium membership as well. It’s cheap enough and there’s tons of content.

Pinyin

Writing system that uses the Latin letters to represent Chinese characters. It uses tone marks on the vowels to indicate the tone you’re supposed to use when pronouncing. You can also use numbers after the sounds to indicate the tone, like 一 [yi1]

Numbers

  • 1 一yi
  • 2 二er
  • 3 三san
  • 4 四si
  • 5 五wu
  • 6 六liu
  • 7 七qi
  • 8 八ba
  • 9 九jiu
  • 10 十shi

Combined Numbers

  • 11 十一shi yi
  • 12 十二shi er
  • 20 二十er shi
  • 21 二十一er shi yi

Tones

  1. Flat Tone [-]
  2. Rising Tone [/]
  3. Falling and Rising Tone [\/]
  4. Falling Tone [\]

Vowels

a, e, i, o, u, ü

Past Tense

Chinese doesn’t really have a past tense. You indicate something happened in the past by giving context (yesterday, last week etc.). Verbs are suffixed by 了le to turn them into past forms.

  • Eat 吃chi - Ate/Had Eaten 吃了chi le
  • I ate pizza. 我吃了披萨wo chi le pi sa

Future Tense

Add 将jiang in front of all verbs.

  • I will eat pizza. 我将吃披萨wo jiang chi pi sa

Present Tense

Add 正在zheng zai in front of all verbs.

  • I am eating pizza. 我正在吃披萨wo zheng zai chi pi sa

Possession

Possession can be expressed with Subject + 的 [de] + Object.

  • My book 我的书wo de shu
  • Your book 你的书 [ni de shu]
  • My pencil 我的铅笔 [wo de qian bi]

Sentence Structures

You are adjective

Instead of using 是shi (is/are) for this, you should use 很hen (very).

  • You are cute 你很可爱ni hen ke ai

Useful Words

  • Pizza 披萨pi sa
  • Water 水 [shui]
  • Want 想要 [xiang yao]
  • Eat 吃 [chi]
  • Chinese 汉语 [han yu]
  • Fox 狐狸 [hu li]

Common Phrases

  • Hello 你好ni hao
  • I am 我是wo shi
  • Who are you? 你是谁? [ni shi shui]
  • You are water. 你是水 [ni shi shui]
  • I want water. 我想要水 [wo xiang yao shui]
  • Bye bye 拜拜 [bai bai]
  • Thank you 谢谢xie xie
  • Good night 晚安wan an
  • Bye bye 拜拜bai bai
  • See you later. 再见zai jian
  • I love you 我爱你wo ai ni
  • I love you too/I also love you 我也爱你 [wo ye ai ni]
  • Happy New Year 新年快乐 [xin nian kuai le]
  • Awesome/amazing 哇，棒极了 [wa, bang ji le]
  • Very cool 真棒 [zhen bang]

Useful resources

  • Pleco app
  • CC-CEDICT dictionary