Learn how to say, "Long time, no see"
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Start speaking Chinese in minutes and grasp the language, culture and customs in just minutes more with Chinese survival phrases, a completely new way to master the basics of Chinese. To get more Chinese lessons and for free, go to chineseclass101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account. Signing up takes less than a minute and you will find more great lessons just like this one. To get more free Chinese lessons, go to chineseclass101.com, lesson 53. |
| Hey guys, so why are you learning Chinese? You know what’s the point? What are you doing here? Why are you listening to these podcasts anyway? Is it just survival, do you just not want to die in China. That’s a pretty good goal but I would also like to help you make friends and meet new people. Learn about more on interesting people. So hopefully we can teach you some phrases that will get you into the Chinese society that will make you friends and make people smile, all right. Today we are going to learn a phrase that is very friendly. Today’s phrase is long time no see. People say this all the time in China even if they’ve only not seen each other for a couple of days. In fact, you could see somebody one night and then see in the next morning and the next morning, you crack a joke like long time no see and they would laugh and you become better friends. I hope you can make a lot of friends in China. So let’s move on to the phrase. In Chinese, long time no see is 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). One more time, 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn). One last time, 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). The first syllable is 好(hǎo) which is third tone, the falling rising tone. The next one is 久(jiǔ) which is also third tone, the falling rising tone. So the 好(hǎo) becomes 好(háo), second tone, the rising tone. So first we have second tone, the rising tone 好(háo) and then third tone, the falling rising tone 久(jiǔ) and then 不(bù) which also gets its tone change because it’s followed by 见(jiàn) which is fourth tone, the falling tone. 不(bù) is normally fourth tone, the falling tone but when it’s followed by a fourth tone, it becomes second tone, the rising tone. So 不(bù) becomes 不(bú), second tone, the rising tone which is followed then by 见(jiàn) which is fourth tone like I said before, the falling tone. So let’s just go over that because it was kind of complicated. Second tone, the rising tone, 好(háo), third tone, the falling rising tone, 久(jiǔ), second tone, the rising tone, 不(bú) and then fourth tone, the falling tone, 见(jiàn), 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). One more time, 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). Alright guys, let’s go over the meaning. 好(hǎo) means good but here it is paired with 久(jiǔ) which means a long time. When you put 好(hǎo) and 久(jiǔ) together, it means a very long time, a good amount of time you might say 好久(háo jiǔ), a long or very long time. 不见(bújiàn) means to not see, 不(bù) means no and 见(jiàn) means to see or to meet. So 不见(bú jiàn) means to not see. So literally we have long time no see, just like English. 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). One last time, 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.). So we just talked about 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.) and now we are going to change it a little bit and add 了(le), 好久不见了(Háojiǔ bújiàn le.). So if we add 了(le) to the end, it becomes 好久不见了(Háojiǔ bújiàn le.) 好久不见了(Háojiǔ bújiàn le.). 了(le)has no tone. So it doesn’t complicate things very much. Let’s go over the tones one last time. It’s second tone, third tone, second tone, fourth tone and then no tone on 了(le). So 好久不见了(Háojiǔ bújiàn le.). |
| All right, to close our today’s lesson, we’d like you to practice what we’ve just learned. I will provide you with the English equivalent of a phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out loud. You will have a few seconds before I give you the answer. So 加油(Jiā yóu)! The first phrase, long time no see, 好久不见(Háojiǔ bújiàn.), the second phrase, the other way of saying long time no see, 好久不见了(Háojiǔ bújiàn le.) |
| Remember to go to chineseclass101.com and sign up for your free lifetime account. Signing up takes less than 1 minute and you will find more great lessons just like this one. Chinese survival phrases will have you speaking with proper pronunciation and arm you with cultural insights and other information to utterly shock and amaze your friends, teachers, colleagues and the people you meet along the way. |
Comments
Hide