how to greet someone in Chinese

Do you know how to greet someone in Chinese？This article will teach you how to say hello 你好 and 您好. Also, I will show you how to write 你, 您 and 好 these three Chinese characters. These words are all HSK-1 basic words. You need to know that there’s a difference between 你好 and 您好.

How to say 你(nǐ)好(hǎo)？

你好 literally means you good. So which means hello, hi, or how do you do in English. These two words are all with the 3rd tone. So when you pronounce them, you should focus on the tone.

Chinese Mandarin is a tonal language. So the key to learning Mandarin Chinese are pronouncing the tone correctly and each alphabet. Which we called Pinyin.

你 means you in English. And it’s singular. 好 means good, great, or fine in English. So put these two words together, it literally means you good. And that’s the hello, hi, and how do you do.

Click the audio below to listen to the pronunciation of 你好 and don’t forget to repeat and practice.

How to say 您(nín)好(hǎo)？

As you can see, there’s a little difference between 你好 and 您好. Actually, the meaning of them is totally the same. They all mean hello, hi or how do you do in English.

You might curious if the meaning is totally the same then why create these two phrases? What’s the difference between 你好 and 您好？

What you need to know is that you should pick one to use in different situation.

你好 just a normal way to greeting someone who you’re familiar with or you didn’t know, totally a stranger.

But 您好 is a more polite way to greet someone. You might want to greet someone who older than you or you want to show more respect to them, then you should say 您好 rather than 你好.

Especially when you’re on business. If you are going to do business with Chinese, then you definitely should use 您好. It will be more formal. Just keep that in mind.

Click on the audio below to listen how to pronounce 您好.

How to write Chinese character?

Learning Chinese character is the most important and interesting things. Why would I say that? Because each character has meanings. And each character is coming from the physical object. I will show you more about Chinese characters in the future.

The basic rules of writing Chinese characters are the strokes order from left to right, top to bottom. Of course, you will meet some strokes order not match that order such as from middle to left and to right. What you should know now is that’s the basic rules.

How to write Chinese character 你？

How to write Chinese character 您 ？

What if I put you on my heart? You means 你, heart means 心. So put 你 on 心, it will become a new word, 您 nin. It means you too, but it’s a more formal and polite way to say you.

How to write Chinese character 好？

好 literally means good or fine. Actually, there’re two words on there. The left one is 女, means female or girl. And the right part is 子, means man or boy, So combine these two words it will be a good thing. Don’t you think that’s interesting? As you can see this is Chinese character. They’re very interesting.