My Topic for Questions

I'm starting the Language & Culture lessons, and I can already tell I'm going to have a TON of questions so this is just going to be my topic for all of my questions. Now, I'm reading in Lesson 1.5 where it says that 'nǐ hǎo' is used between people who have just gotten to know each other or even strangers and that for people that have a closer relationship you use 'nǐ hǎo ma'. With that said: * How close should the relationship be before you can move from 'nǐ hǎo' to 'nǐ hǎo ma'? * Say if I want to greet my sister, would I just automatically greet her with a 'nǐ hǎo ma'? Or would I use something else and THEN 'nǐ hǎo ma'? It says to use 'nín hǎo' when greeting older generations but I have a few questions about that. * How much older should the person be normally when you use 'nín hǎo'? Would you use it for older family members? (Ex: siblings or parents). * It says you can use 'nǐ zǎo' to greet someone in the morning, but if greeting someone older should you say something like 'nín zǎo'? * What are other situations that you would use 'nín' instead of 'nǐ'? Thanks ahead of time for any questions anyone answers!!

In my experience I have learned that "ni hao" is actually not used very much except upon first meeting people. When chinese people meet friends the more common way to greet them would be to make a comment about what they are doing, or to just go into a conversation. To constantly use "ni hao" is like saying your relationship is not very close with someone. As a young person getting food at a fast food store in China, I have been greeted with Nin hao and I think it feels stiff but relatively common in the service industry. Some people may feel old if you call them with Nin. I wouldn't use it for family members since family should be close to you and Nin feels more distant. But for non family older people of about of grandparents age, I would feel okay using Nin more frequently. I am not Chinese though so this is just my opinion on this after having studied for 3 years (6 months at Qinghua University) As for Zao, just treat it like Hao. Ni or Nin are both ok to use.

Thank you so much for answering my questions!! I wasn't really sure, so you helped clear all of that up.

Okay, I've started 1.7 Neutral Tones, and I basically understand the part about Neutral Tones and when the tones come together, but for some reason the part about the order of the sentences has me completely dumbfounded. I've read that part several times, and I understand what they're talking about but for some reason I just cannot get the hang of it.

1)我的汉语~~~~~~~2)不如~~~~~3)你的汉语 ~~~~~~4)棒。 1)Phrase~~~~~2)is inferior to~~~~~~~~3)phrase ~~~~~~~4)adjective. In english, number 2 "is inferior to" can be worded similarly but the meaning is the same no matter what. The key thing is that you have two things you are comparing. These two things go in spots #1 & #3. Next, we must know what adjective we are using in order to compare our two items. This adjective will go in #4. Lastly, we now have two things to compare and we know what we are comparing between the two, but we don't know the relationship between #1/3/4. We don't know if 1 has more of 4 or 1 has less of 4. Less or More. That is the key that we make clear in slot two.

Ah. Now that I read what you wrote and went back and read the lesson again it all makes sense now! Thank you!

Sorry for Hijacking this thread, but I couldn't find PM feature. Question for Oggiedoggie: You said you went to study Chinese for 6 months in China. Does this mean you had to approve HSK 2 in order to do so?

It's fine. There's no PM system yet but hopefully they'll be adding something sometime soon.

Not for Qinghua's Intensive Chinese Center I didn't have to take it. They required a transcript of a university degree (in progress). As far as I know, language programs at universities like what I enrolled generally don't need HSK scores. However, the fact that I haven't researched this much past my Qinghua program, and that you are asking this makes me question myself here. That said, I know that if you wanted to study a Chinese language degree of some sorts alongside regular Chinese students then you would need a pretty high HSK.

Alright, well I'm on 2.4 and at the beginning of the dialog I'm told that xiānsheng means sir, but further down into the conversation is says xiànshēng means sir. Now I am wondering are both right? And if so, why is there two different pronunciations?

先生 should be xiānshēng. Sheng is usually pronounced in neutral tone. In different varieties of Mandarin, some words have different tones. In this case "both" could be right. Sichuan Mandarin comes to mind when I think of different tones. I was teasing some Chongqing friends by calling them 瓜袜子 guā wàzi. At first listen, they couldn't understand. I repeated and they were like: "ohhh! guǎ wázi !"

Ahh, okay. That honestly had me confused. Thanks again Oggie!