A small bridge: greeting, name, thanks, parting.
Welcome. Sit if you can. This first episode is short on purpose.
Mandarin has four tones and a fifth that is no tone at all — a soft falling away. We will not learn all of them today. We will learn how to greet someone, how to give your name, how to thank, and how to say until next time. That is enough for a first voice.
Read each phrase aloud, or have it read to you. Then again. The voice you build by the third pass is the one that stays.
Before the words, the shape. An episode is a small data structure — four kinds of phrase, each made of words, each word made of a written character, a sound, a tone, and a meaning.
-- the bones of every lesson data Tone = High | Rising | DipRise | Falling | Neutral data Word = Word { hanzi :: String -- 你 , pinyin :: String -- "nǐ" , tones :: [Tone] -- [DipRise] , meaning :: String -- "you" } type Phrase = [Word] data Episode = Episode { number :: Int , theme :: String , phrases :: [Phrase] } -- this lesson firstVoice :: Episode firstVoice = Episode 1 "the first voice" [ greet, askName, giveThanks, untilNext, smallNumbers ]
You don't need to read the code to learn the language. But the shape is there if you want it. The language has bones; this is what they look like.
The first word is 你 (), which means you. The second is 好 (), which means good, or well. Put together — 你好 — they make you good, the everyday hello.
Pronounced nee-how. Both syllables held in a soft falling-and-rising shape — that is the third tone, what the bones above call DipRise. The voice dips down a little, then rises back up. You can feel it in your throat.
A small kindness from the language: when two third-tone syllables sit beside each other, the first one shifts up to a rising tone instead, so what you actually say is closer to née how. This is called tone sandhi. You don't need to remember the name. The shift will happen on its own once the second tone is in your mouth.
For someone older, or someone you are showing respect to: 您好 () — neen how. The 您 is a more formal you, with a small heart written underneath the character. You cannot see it, but it is there.
If you remember only one phrase from this episode, remember this one. It opens almost any door.
To ask someone's name, the gentle form is 你叫什么名字？ () — nee jee-ow shun-muh ming-zuh — literally you called what name?
To answer: 我叫 ___ ( ___) — wo jee-ow ___ — I am called ___. Add your own name at the end. The shape of your name in someone else's mouth is one of the small surprises of a new language. Let it be a small surprise.
A more compact version, useful when introductions are quick: 我是 ___ ( ___) — wo shir ___ — I am ___.
The phrase that comes after introductions, the one that does a lot of social work: 很高兴认识你 () — hun gow-shing run-shir nee — very pleased to meet you. It can be shortened, rearranged, softened. Say it however it lives in your mouth.
谢谢 () — shyeh-shyeh — thank you. Two syllables, both falling. The first is the full fourth tone, sharp and downward. The second softens to a neutral tone, almost no tone at all. The pair has a small inward bow built into it.
The reply, the one that comes back: 不客气 () — boo kuh-chee — literally don't be polite. It is how you say you're welcome in Mandarin, but said as if to wave the thanks away. Don't even mention it.
再见 () — dzye-jyen — goodbye. The two characters are 再, again, and 见, see. The whole word means again, see — that is, we will see each other again. Even at parting, the language assumes return.
Softer, the one a host says to a guest who is leaving: 慢走 () — mahn dzoh — walk slowly. It is a beautiful phrase. It says: I am not rushing you out the door. You can use it when someone is about to leave a room you are sitting in, and you want them to feel the room is still theirs as they go.
The first ten, in order:
一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十
ee are sahn suh woo lyo chee bah jyo shir
Memorize them in pairs if that helps — ee-are, sahn-suh, woo-lyo, chee-bah, jyo-shir — or as a small song. They have a natural rhythm. Most counting in Mandarin builds out from these ten the way English does from ours, which makes them disproportionately useful for the work they do.
Three times each, slowly:
Read them aloud. Or have them read to you. Then again. Then once more, with breaks long enough to let the syllables settle.
This is one episode. There will be more — 第二集 (), the second episode. There can be many. Each one short on purpose, each one a small bridge.
The voice that holds them is patient. The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao, the old book says. But the one that fits between two people learning to greet each other is enough.
Until next time.