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Newbie - Asking for a Phone Number
Discussion
At the risk of subjecting our poor receptionist to an onslaught of telephone calls from Jenny fans trying out this newly-acquired language tomorrow morning, we publish this lesson on requesting a phone number. In this podcast, learn to improve your Mandarin skills by practicing how to request information. Learn how to improve your mental math skills by actually trying to memorize the 50 digit long number that gets spat back at ya!
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0597
asking-for-a-phone-number
lesson
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@pecha, CP should record a cover of "Jenny" (the 867-5309 song) in Mandarin. I will try it myself in hokey karaoke:
Jenny 知道你的号码 ／ 八六七五三〇九
There's just 1 extra syllable for 你的 instead of "your" that is easily absorbed into the beat.
Dear Cpod,
20 Days back I started Chinese not knowing any words beyond xie xie and nihao.
Today I just completed all three exercises of this lesson in Hanzi. It is for me a great moment. I never imagined I could ever come to read or recognise Hanzi.. and most I had hoped for was to learn to speak a bit of Chinese.
I still have a long way to go, but I feel with CPOD, I'll succeed.
Thanks a million!!!
In the dialog, shouldn't yāo be written 幺 instead of 一 ?
Hi go_manly
You don't need to use the character 幺 even if you pronounce it as "yao". By the same token, "幺" is not used for hotel room numbers shown on doors, for example.
你们好。我希望你们都好。可以我们做朋友吗？
In one of the intro lessons, I learned
你叫什么名字？
Can you also ask someone's name using the same sentence pattern as in the expansion section of this lesson, i.e.
你的名字是什么？
Or would that sound odd?
That's right. “你的名字是什么？”sound odd, I think no one use this sentence in China. We usually use 你叫什么名字？
No doubt my question has been asked and answered in several questions, but I'll be bold and ask anyway: it sounds as if 不用谢
is pronounced with a second tone on the first syllable (e.g. bu2), while the pinyin indicates it is fourth tone. Is the tone change for 不 in this case only done in speaking, or am I simply mis-hearing the initial tone?
Hi cecilvyse,
You are hearing correctly. The there is a tone change rule that states that two 4th tones in a row changes to 2nd and 4th.
I don't think it is across the board though as I have heard instances where two 4ths change to a 4th and a neutral. Also in Taiwan, many words ignore the tone change completely and go with 2 fourths just to add to the confusion. ;)
谢谢！Very helpful. And yet, to add still more to my confusion, I have a book in which the spoken tone changes are reflected in the text. I guess that since there are several acceptable ways of pronouncing 不 depending on who you're talking to, it makes since to keep the pinyin in fourth tone and let people do what they will with it.
谢谢！That makes sense to me and reflects what I've heard...it even feels pretty natural to pronounce 不 in that way...and a small problem overall in the attempt to learn Chinese.
Hamshank is right.
bu4 yong4 (in speaking it pronuce as bu2 yong4, the second tone)
bu4 kai1xin1, bu4xing2, bu4 hao3 (in those cases, it prounce as the forth tone)
hi
wher u stay in china
可以我们做朋友吗？