Learn how to ask about someone's nationality
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.
| Hēi , dàjiā hǎo , wǒ jiào Mǎ Yànrú .Hi everybody! I’m YanruMa. |
| Welcome to ChineseClass101.com’s “Sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Chinese. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, We will discuss how to talk about your nationality. |
| When you meet a new person in China, they might ask you Nǐ shì nǎlǐ rén? which is the equivalent of "Where do you come from?" |
| You’re familiar with nǐ , the word for "you." |
| shì means "is" |
| Now, nǎlǐ is "Where", rén is ‘people’ so when you put them together nǎlǐ rén means ‘of what nationality’/ |
| All together it's Nǐ shì nǎlǐ rén ? |
| [slowly] Nǐ shì nǎlǐ rén ? |
| Answering this question is very easy! You just say Wǒ shì , which means "I am", then your nationality. |
| For example: Wǒ shì Měiguó rén. |
| [slowly] Wǒ shì Měiguó rén . |
| This means. I am American. |
| Just replace “Měiguó rén” with your own nationality. |
| "I am German" is Wǒ shì Déguó rén. |
| "I am Italian" is Wǒ shì Yìdàlì rén |
| "I am Brazilian" is Wǒ shì Bāxī rén. |
| Be careful, because you might be asked Nǐ cóng nǎli lái? which needs to be answered in a different way. This sentence means “Where do you come from? Here we can see a new word cóng. It is a preposition for direction. And the verb lái means “from.” |
| [slowly]Nǐ cóng nǎli lái? |
| Now let’s see how to answer it.It’s very easy,too.You just need to replace nǐ with wǒ and nǎli with your country name. |
| For example. |
| Wǒ cóng Měiguó lái. |
| [slowly]Wǒ cóng Měiguó lái. |
| To return the question you can simply say Nǐ ne? which is "And you?" |
| Now it’s time for Yanru’s tips |
| As you know,China is a very big country, so when people from different cities meet in the same city, they often want to ask about each other’s hometown.In this situation, bothNǐ shì nǎlǐ rén? or Nǐ cóng nǎli lái? will work. You just need to use the hometown instead of a country name. That’s it! |
| In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities. |
| Next time we’ll continue to study the preposition zài and we'll see how to use it to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Chinese? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ lesson. |
| Zài jiàn ! |
Comments
Hide