Learn how to ask what time something opens
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Anthony: Welcome to chineseclass101, the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn Chinese. |
| Echo: 大家好，我是Echo。 (Dàjiā hǎo, wǒ shì Echo.) |
| Anthony: Hi and I am Anthony and today we have our 10th lesson, The Early Chinese customer. |
| Echo: In the second season of our beginner series. |
| Anthony: Right. Now this lesson is very straightforward. |
| Echo: 没错。(Méi cuò.) And we are going to teach you how to ask when 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: Now the uses for this word are obvious and plentiful and this is one of those words that you want to be able to use proper grammar with. |
| Echo: 对。(Duì.) Now today’s dialogue takes place outside a store. |
| Anthony: Yes and at least one of the speakers is outside the store because the store hasn’t opened yet. |
| Echo: And both of them are speaking casually. |
| Anthony: Yes. Now before we go to the dialogue, if you haven’t yet, come to chineseclass101.com. It’s only going to take you a few seconds to sign up for your free lifetime account. All you have to do is put in your email address. |
| Echo: And you are going to get tons of good stuff. |
| Anthony: That’s right, tons of free stuff. |
| Echo: Good and free. |
| Anthony: With that said, on to the dialogue. |
| DIALOGUE |
| A.你们什么时候开门？ (Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| B.九点。 (Jiǔ diǎn.) |
| A.现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?) |
| B.八点。 (Bā diǎn.) |
| Anthony: One more time, a little bit slower. |
| A.你们什么时候开门？ (Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| B.九点。 (Jiǔ diǎn.) |
| A.现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?) |
| B.八点。 (Bā diǎn.) |
| Anthony: One more time with English. |
| Echo: 你们什么时候开门？ (Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| Anthony: When do you open? |
| Echo: 九点。 (Jiǔ diǎn.) |
| Anthony: 9 o’ clock. |
| Echo: 现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?) |
| Anthony: What time is it now? |
| Echo: 八点。 (Bā diǎn.) |
| Anthony: 8 o’ clock. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Anthony: So I found myself asking this question many times, when do you open? |
| Echo: Really? So you’ve been waiting outside for store to open. |
| Anthony: Well I guess you could call it a store. It was actually MacDonald’s. Yeah so I was on this long distance bus right back from Inner Mongolia and the driver decided to drop us off in some random part of Beijing at 5 in the morning. So the only thing that was on my mind was get to McDonald’s and get some food but I wasn’t asking when do you open, I was asking, when do you start serving breakfast. |
| Echo: So when do they start serving breakfast? |
| Anthony: If my memory serves me correct, I believe it is 6 AM. |
| Echo: Right. But you don’t have to wait for our vocabulary section to start. |
| Anthony: Yes unlike breakfast at MacDonald’s, chineseclass101.com brings you vocabulary on time. So let’s get to the vocab section. |
| Anthony: And now the vocab section. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Echo: 什么时候 (jǐdiǎn) |
| Anthony: When. |
| Echo: 什么时候, 什么时候. 开门 (jǐdiǎn, jǐdiǎn. kāimén) |
| Anthony: To open. |
| Echo: 开门, 开门. 现在 (kāimén, kāimén. xiànzài) |
| Anthony: Right now. |
| Echo: 现在, 现在. 几点 (xiànzài, xiànzài. jǐdiǎn) |
| Anthony: At what time. |
| Echo: 几点, 几点. 关门 (jǐdiǎn, jǐdiǎn. guānmén) |
| Anthony: To close. |
| Echo: 关门, 关门. 小时 (guānmén, guānmén. xiǎoshí) |
| Anthony: Hour. |
| Echo: 小时, 小时. 分钟 (xiǎoshí, xiǎoshí, fēnzhōng) |
| Anthony: Minute. |
| Echo: 分钟, 分钟. (fēnzhōng, fēnzhōng.) |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Anthony: Now the focus of this lesson revolves around one word. Echo, what is that word? |
| Echo: 什么时候 (shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: When |
| Echo: 什么时候 (shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: Now let’s break this word down. The first part is “what”. |
| Echo: 什么 (shénme) |
| Anthony: And the second part is “time”. |
| Echo: 时候 (shíhòu) |
| Anthony: So it translates as what time. |
| Echo: 什么时候 (shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: As in |
| Echo: 你什么时候回来？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu huílai?) |
| Anthony: When will you come back? |
| Echo: 你什么时候回来？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu huílai?) |
| Anthony: So we’ve introduced this word in our vocabulary section. We are also going to take a deeper look at it in the grammar point. Now on to our next word. |
| Echo: 几点 (jǐdiǎn) |
| Anthony: At what time. |
| Echo: 几点 (jǐdiǎn) |
| Anthony: Now there is a slight difference between this word and |
| Echo: 什么时候 (shénme shíhòu) Right. You want to use 几点 (jǐdiǎn) when asking at specific point in time. For example 现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?) |
| Anthony: Yeah, what time is it right now? |
| Echo: 现在几点？ (Xiànzài jǐ diǎn?) |
| Anthony: And this brings us to our next word. |
| Echo: 现在 (xiànzài) |
| Anthony: Right now. |
| Echo: 现在 (xiànzài) |
| Anthony: And these are both fourth tone. |
| Echo: 现在不开门。 (Xiànzài bù kāimén) |
| Anthony: Yeah it’s not open right now. |
| Echo: Yeah you don’t want to hear this right? |
| Anthony: Yeah you don’t want to hear this. |
| Echo: 现在不开门。 (Xiànzài bù kāimén) |
| Anthony: Yeah. |
| Echo: You have to deal with it. Next one 关门 (guānmén) |
| Anthony: And this is to close. |
| Echo: 关门。我们十一点关门。 (Guānmén. Wǒmen shíyī diǎn guānmén.) |
| Anthony: Yeah this is, we close at 11 o’clock. |
| Echo: 我们十一点关门。 (Wǒmen shíyī diǎn guānmén.) |
| Anthony: Yeah and this literally means, we are closing the doors at 11 and we are kicking everybody out. |
| Echo: 没错， (Méi cuò,) before 11. |
| Anthony: Before 11. Now the opposite of to close is |
| Echo: 开门 (Kāimén) |
| Anthony: Yeah and this is to open. |
| Echo: 开门。他们七点开门。 (Kāimén. Tāmen qī diǎn kāimén.) |
| Anthony: They open at 7. |
| Echo: 他们七点开门。 (Tāmen qī diǎn kāimén.) |
| Anthony: The last two words in our vocabulary section are going to be dealing with time measurement and the first word is |
| Echo: 小时 (Xiǎoshí) |
| Anthony: And this is the word for hour. |
| Echo: 小时 (Xiǎoshí) |
| Anthony: And that’s third tone, second tone. |
| Echo: 这部电影两个小时。 (Zhè bù diànyǐng liǎng gè xiǎoshí.) |
| Anthony: This movie is two hours long. |
| Echo: 这部电影两个小时。 (Zhè bù diànyǐng liǎng gè xiǎoshí.) |
| Anthony: Okay and the next word we have is |
| Echo: 分钟 (Fēnzhōng) |
| Anthony: And this is the word for minute, both first tones. |
| Echo: 我们聊了十分钟。 (Wǒmen liáole shí fēnzhōng.) |
| Anthony: We chatted for 10 minutes. |
| Echo: 我们聊了十分钟。(Wǒmen liáole shí fēnzhōng.) |
| Anthony: Okay. So that’s it for vocabulary section. Now let’s go on to the grammar point. |
| Anthony: It’s grammar time. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Anthony: Now we’ve already introduced some helpful time related vocabulary. Now we are going to teach you how to ask when |
| Echo: 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: With proper grammar. |
| Echo: Great. |
| Anthony: Now in the dialogue, we heard this sentence. |
| Echo: 你们什么时候开门？ (Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| Anthony: When do you open? |
| Echo: 你们什么时候开门？ (Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| Anthony: This literally translates as, you |
| Echo: 你们 (Nǐmen) |
| Anthony: At what time? |
| Echo: 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: Open door. |
| Echo: 开门 (Kāimén) |
| Anthony: The first difference that we notice between the English and the Chinese translation is the placement of the word when. |
| Echo: 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: In English, we stick when right at the front of the sentence. |
| Echo: But in Chinese, 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) is placed between the subject 你们 (Nǐmen)and the verb 开门。你们什么时候开门？ (Kāimén. Nǐmen shénme shíhòu kāimén?) |
| Anthony: Now it’s important to note that this structure is only used in the future and present tenses. You don’t want to use this for past tense at all. |
| Echo: Exactly. |
| Anthony: So the formula for using when in the future and present tense is |
| Echo: The subject plus 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) plus the verb. |
| Anthony: Great. So let’s take a look at some more examples and we are going to highlight the formula for using when in the present and future tense. |
| Echo: Okay. 我们什么时候吃饭？ (Wǒmen shénme shíhòu chīfàn?) |
| Anthony: When are we going to eat? |
| Echo: 我们什么时候吃饭？ (Wǒmen shénme shíhòu chīfàn?) So the subject is 我们 (Wǒmen) plus 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) plus the verb 吃饭。我们什么时候吃饭？ (Chīfàn. Wǒmen shénme shíhòu chīfàn?) |
| Anthony: Okay great. Now let’s see the next one. |
| Echo: 她什么时候下班？ (Tā shénme shíhòu xiàbān?) |
| Anthony: When did she get off work? |
| Echo: 她什么时候下班？ (Tā shénme shíhòu xiàbān?) |
| Anthony: So the subject here is |
| Echo: 她 (Tā) |
| Anthony: And then |
| Echo: 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: Plus the verb. |
| Echo: 下班。她什么时候下班？ (Xiàbān. Tā shénme shíhòu xiàbān?) |
| Anthony: Now notice, even though we are talking about the future tense, you don’t want to add the word, will. |
| Echo: Right. |
| Anthony: As in, when will she get off work. |
| Echo: Right, the future tense is implied here. |
| Anthony: On to our next example. |
| Echo: 你什么时候毕业？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu bìyè?) |
| Anthony: When are you going to graduate? |
| Echo: 你什么时候毕业？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu bìyè?) |
| Anthony: So here the subject is |
| Echo: 你 (Nǐ) |
| Anthony: Plus |
| Echo: 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) |
| Anthony: Plus the verb. |
| Echo: 毕业。你什么时候毕业？ (Bìyè. Nǐ shénme shíhòu bìyè?) |
| Anthony: So we’ve covered asking when. Now let’s go over answering when. Okay so you want to make it easy on yourself. Don’t try and repeat the entire sentence in your answer. All you have to do is say the time. So for example, when does the movie start? |
| Echo: 电影什么时候开始？ (Diànyǐng shénme shíhòu kāishǐ?) |
| Anthony: So all you have to do to reply to this question is use the time. So for example, if I want to say 7 o’ clock. So let’s hear that exchange one more time. |
| Echo: 电影什么时候开始？ (Diànyǐng shénme shíhòu kāishǐ?) |
| Anthony: When does the movie start? |
| Echo: 七点。 (Qī diǎn.) |
| Anthony: 7 o’ clock. So all you are doing is answering with the time. Very simple. |
| Echo: Right. |
| Anthony: Okay. Next sample sentence. When are you coming back? |
| Echo: 你什么时候回来？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu huílái?) |
| Anthony: And the sample answer is tomorrow. |
| Echo: 明天。 (Míngtiān) |
| Anthony: So let’s hear that exchange together. |
| Echo: 你什么时候回来？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu huílái?) |
| Anthony: When are you coming back? |
| Echo: 明天。 (Míngtiān.) |
| Anthony: Tomorrow or Beijing dialect, you can say |
| Echo: 明儿。 (Míng er.) |
| Anthony: Yeah that’s all the fun. So for review, we’ve learned how to ask when in the future and present tense. Echo, what’s the formula. |
| Echo: Yeah that is the subject plus 什么时候 (Shénme shíhòu) plus the verb. For example, 你什么时候学习？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu xuéxí?) |
| Anthony: Yeah when are you going to study? |
| Echo: 你什么时候学习？ (Nǐ shénme shíhòu xuéxí?) |
| Anthony: And the answer of course is |
| Echo: 现在。 (Xiànzài) |
| Anthony: Right now. |
| Echo: 现在。 (Xiànzài) |
Outro |
| Anthony: And if you want to study Chinese right now, come to chineseclass101.com |
| Echo: Right. |
| Anthony: You can sign up for a free lifetime membership, you are going to get access to tons of lessons, tons of free material. |
| Echo: 没错。 (Méi cuò.) |
| Anthony: That’s right. Start studying right now. From Beijing, I am Anthony. |
| Echo: 我是Echo。 (Wǒ shì Echo.) |
| Anthony: And we will see you next time. Thanks for listening. |
| Echo: 下次见，拜拜。 (Xià cì jiàn, bàibài.) |
| Anthony: Bye bye. |
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