Megasprachen

Chinese Taster Training · Chapter 1: First Words and Phrases

What's Your Name?

To the next lesson

Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi? means “What’s your name?”

You are standing by the Nile, which flows softly along – – and say a hard Italian “ciao” to somebody: that gives you jiào. He replies how lovely it is here and points at a cable car: “lovely” (schön in German) gives you shénme, and the cable car marks the rising tone. Up at the top your mum is handing out mint tea that she brought up by cable car, and everybody accepts it a little hesitantly. Mum and mint (Minze in German) give you míngzi.

Together with the previous sentence, that gives you a complete introduction in Chinese.